


Cold Hearts and Muddy Understandings

by thisiszircon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP: EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 00:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 63,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8306873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: When the dust has settled; when the spent curses in the air have faded to a prickle; when the sounds of pain and terror whimper their way to silence–
When the battle is over, what happens next?
Hermione Granger has been active in the fight against evil since she was twelve years old.  With victory comes the opportunity to take stock of the more ordinary aspects to her life.  She can finally consider the choices that most young women get to make: lifestyle, career, romance.
But the trauma she has known has left its mark.  And even before her life took a turn towards constant life-or-death, Hermione was far from ordinary.  Her friends are looking to their own futures.  Her parents don't remember her.  Her surrogate family is in mourning.  The Wizarding World has always viewed her as an outsider.  Hermione realises she is, in many ways, alone.
It does not take long before she finds herself wishing fervently for the welcome distraction of another dark wizard.  Life was so much simpler when priority number one was keeping Harry Potter alive...





	1. Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> "This barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings."
> 
> Edmund Burke  
>  'Reflections on the Revolution in France' 1790

"How's the pain today?" Hermione asked as she unwrapped Anthony Goldstein's left leg as gently as she could.

"Much better," Anthony said.  He was getting used to this ritual now; he wasn't even blushing any more as Hermione began to apply salve to his skin.  "I can make do with the milder potion in the mornings now.  I might even forgo the Dreamless Sleep tonight."

Hermione nodded encouragingly.  Good for Anthony, if he was ready to try to sleep without the aid of a potion.  She wasn't sure she was going to manage that for some time, yet.  In the three days that had gone by since the Battle of Hogwarts she seemed to have undergone some kind of transition.  No more capable and adventurous Hermione Granger, stalwart friend of the Boy-Who-Just-Kept-Living.  She had morphed, somehow, into a timorous wreck who spent most of each day jumping at shadows.

Even that, however, was preferable to the way she felt the rest of the time.  Even that was better than the rage.

Of course she'd always had something of a temper, but it was – hitherto – a facet of her character she'd believed she had under control.  Now, in these post-war days, she had to work so much harder to quell the urge to snap at people.  Sometimes the questions or comments directed her way left her so furious that she could hardly breathe.  The moments crept up on her, coming from out of nowhere but transforming her mood into something monstrous.

The only thing that helped her to calm down was to let herself imagine how satisfying it would feel to _show_ these stupid, blinkered idiots how unjustifiable, how insane, their tame view of the world was.  She would picture it in her mind: let the idiots cling to their trusting attitude, let them see how much protection it offered them, when they realised that they were living in a world where an eighteen year old former-teachers-pet could look them straight in the eye and then tear up their faces with a flick of her wand and a voiceless hex.

Maybe _then_ they might learn that no one, nowhere, is really safe.  Not ever.

And then she'd blink, and the horror film playing out behind her eyes would be gone, and so would the urge to unleash her anger on the poor, unsuspecting, oblivious idiot who'd lacked the sense to steer well clear of Hermione Granger and her newfound mental instability...

Because she regretted these dark fantasies as soon as she indulged them.  Of course she did.  She hated violence.  Or at least, she thought that was the case.  Hoped it was.  So she blamed her mood swings on sleeplessness and the throbbing pain that had set up permanent residence in her temples, and she tried to look forward to a time in the future when she wasn't frightened by everything.  Including herself.

Her work here at St. Mungo's was something of a lifeline.  Madam Pomfrey had allowed her to continue to assist with the post-battle injuries, even after the evacuation from Hogwarts.  Hermione had claimed a desire to keep herself occupied, but there was more to it than that.  She couldn't be alone without being scared, nor could she remove herself from people without worrying that she'd lose the ability to deal with them altogether.  Never before had she felt the need to work on her own capacity for empathy, but in these shaken, uncertain days following Voldemort's defeat it felt – just a bit – like it was a skill that might crumble to rust without a conscious effort to practise it.

In truth, Hermione's behavioural shortcomings in the days since the battle were obvious and profuse.  They could even be described as 'textbook', which seemed horrifically fitting for a young woman who had defined herself by her diligence in learning.  Still, she could hardly fail to recognise the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when she felt them ringing in her ears.

Anthony was still trying to chat, possibly to distract himself from the way Hermione's hands were reaching up past his knee.  She'd drifted for a while.  She was doing that more and more often.  With a frown, she tried to pull herself together.

"Sorry, what was that?" she asked.

"I was just saying – Professor McGonagall came by earlier.  She was telling me about the team she's putting together.  You know.  To fix the school."

"The architects?"  Hermione hid a smile.  No wonder Anthony was interested.  His Muggle mother was distantly related to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who'd designed some of the Oxford colleges and a bit of Westminster Abbey.  Anthony had always liked architecture.

"Yeah, Charms Masters, really, but specialising in structure.  They're coming from all over.  America, Europe, and some witch from the Middle East."

They talked about the job of fixing Hogwarts for a while, until Hermione was finished with the more intimate parts of Anthony's leg and there was no need to distract him any longer.  "All done," she said after tucking the end of his bandage neatly away.  "Two more treatments like this and you'll be all mended."

Anthony looked at her a moment.  "Good to know," he offered, with a smile that didn't touch his solemn eyes.

Because, of course, Hermione was not the only one dealing with more than physical injuries.  She tried to return his smile as she stood straight and stretched her back.  Her eyes closed briefly against the too-bright light of the floating globes illuminating the ward.  Then she sighed, shook her head against the fuzziness of fatigue, and began to gather up her supplies.

"Um," Anthony tried, then he cleared his throat.  "You all right?"

"Fine," Hermione replied automatically, making every attempt not to growl.  She was wholly and sincerely fed up with people asking her that.

"Only you look pretty washed out."

Of course she did.  She'd managed three hours of sleep the morning after the battle, right until the moment when she'd woken up screaming.  Since then she'd risked only forty winks here and there, because stocks of Dreamless Sleep were low, and patients who actually needed hospital beds were being prioritised over people whose only visible injuries were a few bumps and scrapes.

"I'll be fine," she said, suddenly wanting to escape Anthony's attempts at kindness.  Such things felt like an attack.  Every "Are you okay?" could be more honestly translated as "You're still alive – what the fuck is your problem?"

She turned away, swallowing hard, clutching unused medical supplies in her arms to return to the stores.  She needed to find something else to do, someone else to concentrate on.  Someone who didn't give a crap about the dark smudges around her eyes or the gauntness of her cheekbones.  Someone who wasn't going to ask her stupid questions like have you been eating, Hermione, have you been sleeping?  Because of course she fucking hadn't–

Anthony's voice called her name, but it came from a distance.  Around the edges of Hermione's vision, blackness encroached.  She felt a flutter of panic when she realised that the tiled floor of the hospital ward was coming up to meet her in a manner that was just far too fast and uncontrolled, but even as she tried to prepare herself for the pain of impact, the whole world went away.

~~~

_Darkness._

_Discomfort._

_Darkness and discomfort meant dungeons.  Dungeons meant captivity._

_Captivity meant Malfoy Manor._

_And Malfoy Manor meant terror and pain and humiliation and helplessness.  Hermione knew a surge of panic, shuddered as she tried not to let the feeling overwhelm her, and she drew a breath to try to call for her friends–_

 

"Welcome back," said Madam Pomfrey's voice.

Hermione tensed into absolute stillness and thought for a moment.  Hallucination?  No.  No, she was missing something.  She let the breath out slowly.  Then she risked opening her eyes–

Ouch.

Way, _way_ too bright.  She shuttered her eyes again and bit her lip to keep from groaning.  Her head hurt, just above her left eye; it was a separate hurt to her old friend the permanent-tension-headache.  Which was still there, of course, that being the whole nature of 'permanent'.  And there was a hot flare of bruisey-pain over her left hip as well.

"Easy, there," the matron's voice insisted.  "Give yourself a minute."

Hermione breathed a few times before risking the light again.  It wasn't quite so painful this time.  As her blurred vision cleared, the familiar face of Madam Pomfrey that coalesced above her was surprisingly reassuring.

She was in St. Mungo's.  Of course she was.  Malfoy Manor had been weeks ago.

"What happened?" she mumbled.

"You passed out."  Pomfrey made it sound accusatory.  "Exhaustion.  Dehydration – and how you managed that after three days working in various well-equipped infirmaries is beyond me, but I can only assume you've not only been failing to eat properly but you've also been forgetting to drink."

Hermione shuffled in the bed she had been mercilessly tucked into.  "Must have slipped my mind," she conceded.

"And by the way, young lady, you might have told me that the wound on your neck had re-opened.  I could have closed it up again for you _before_ it became infected."

That was definitely accusatory.  Hermione rolled her eyes and considered the place where Bellatrix's cursed knife had sliced into her.  An infection would explain the itching heat which had been growing at the lowest point of the injury.  "Fine," she growled and opened her eyes to glare at Pomfrey.  "All my fault.  I'm a terrible excuse for a human being.  Can I bloody well get up now?"

The words settled in the quiet air of the hospital ward.  It took Hermione several moments before she even managed to process the anger she had just thrown at a member of the Hogwarts staff.

"Er..."

Madam Pomfrey tut-tutted and came to the head of the bed, where she helped Hermione sit up and then offered her a glass of water.

"Slowly," she instructed.  "I've got some potions down you already, but your throat is probably sore from being coaxed to swallow, and your digestive system will be all out of kilter."

Hermione sipped.  "Sorry," she murmured.

Pomfrey sighed hard.  "I wish I'd known you were in this kind of state."

"Really, I'm fine.  Just a bit tired."

"Oh, is that so?  And between the two of us, young lady, who has the better grasp of medical diagnostic charms?"

Hermione didn't deign to reply.

More gently, Pomfrey asked, "Hermione, why aren't you at the Burrow with Mr. Weasley and his family?"

She winced.  Immersing herself in that many people and that much grief?  No thank you.  The very idea had almost induced a panic attack two days ago, when Ron had found her as she'd helped move the last patients from Hogwarts, and he'd simply asked, "Coming, then?"  She'd been grateful for the excuse of being needed to tend to the injured, although Ron's eyes had clouded with hurt when she'd sent him on alone.

Hermione gave a tired sigh.  "Ron's got enough on his plate.  The family's still trying to move back in – they had to leave the Burrow for a while.  And there's everything that, you know, happened."  She couldn't even say Fred's name yet.  One of a list of names.  Some belonged to people she hadn't even realised she cared about.

"What about your parents, then?" Pomfrey pressed.

She closed her eyes.  Pomfrey misunderstood, because Hermione heard a sharp breath and then the matron said, "Oh, Merlin, Hermione – I didn't realise.  Of course they were targets.  So many Muggles were, and with their connection to you...I'm so sorry, dear–"

"It's okay," she said, raising a hand and opening her eyes.  "They're fine.  At least, I hope so.  I, er, hid them."  She pressed the heel of her hand to the middle of her forehead, where the headache pulsed so hard it was making her feel nauseous.  "Getting them back – that's a job for when I'm in better shape."

"Ah.  So you admit you aren't in the best shape right now?"

Hermione looked at Pomfrey.  "I admit nothing."

Pomfrey huffed a laugh, but at least they were back on an even keel.  "You need to sleep, Hermione, if you can.  It's already after midnight.  And by the way, a good night's sleep will do wonders for that headache you're not admitting to."  Hermione glared.  Pomfrey gave a small smile.  "If you can get some rest, I'll see about letting you back up in the morning.  _After_ you've eaten a sensible breakfast."

"Haven't I just had several hours of sleep?" Hermione complained.

"Being unconscious isn't quite the same thing.  Natural sleep is the best healer of them all."  Pomfrey noted something in Hermione's expression.  She nodded quietly, fished in the pocket of her apron and handed over a small vial of Dreamless Sleep.

Hermione schooled her expression to be as neutral as she could make it: never a trick she'd really mastered, but she was better at it now than she had been six months ago.  "Thank you."

"It's only a short-term measure," Pomfrey pointed out.

Hermione knew a rush of impatience.  She wasn't sure whether it was because Madam Pomfrey was stating the blindingly obvious, or whether it was because the statement was so damned inconvenient.  Hermione _knew_ that sooner or later she'd have to face her dreams.  She also knew that she dreaded this event in a way she had never dreaded the showdown with Voldemort.

She threw back the potion, ignoring the soreness in her throat.  Then she settled back in the bed.  She still hurt in quite a lot of places, but she wrapped up those sensations, made them a part of herself rather than something she needed to react to.  After all, she'd survived when others had not.  She absolutely bloody well _should_ be hurting.

Madam Pomfrey smoothed her hair from her face after Hermione closed her eyes.  It was a caring gesture, a tender gesture, but the thing that soothed her more was the sound of those footsteps, moments later, as they moved away from her bedside.

~~~

"Hermione!"

It was Harry's voice.  Of course it was.  When her name was called like this, in panic or excitement or just plain need, it was only ever going to be Harry or Ron, and Ron was grieving with his family in Devon.

Harry led with his shoulder as he moved around Healers, Mediwitches and various visitors.  A couple of friendly faces pointed him towards the bed in which Hermione was sullenly awaiting permission to get up.  She'd eaten almost a whole bowl of porridge with honey and banana, even though it had made her stomach feel bloated and nauseous.  It was the price she'd had to pay to gain permission to stand up and get dressed and join the grown-ups.

The problem, she had come to understand, with being a patient in a hospital bed was that you had no control over the people who inflicted their presence on you.  Cormac McLaggen had been schmoozing around the ward that morning, and had insisted on settling in to enjoy a variety of friendly reminiscences with Hermione as she'd waited for breakfast.  Obvious enough why, of course; half of McLaggen's family were high-ups in a Ministry that had failed to denounce an evil, racist Dark Wizard.  Cormac had been sent in to re-establish key social connections in an attempt at damage limitation.  Everything had to be about fucking politics, didn't it?

"There you are!" Harry gasped, like he'd run all the way from wherever he had been.  His tone of voice seemed accusatory, like Hermione had made herself deliberately hard to find.  "Thank god," he said, betraying his Muggle upbringing just for a moment as he caught his breath.  He saw the vacant visitor's chair by the bedside and slumped into it.  His eyes had the too-manic look of someone else who hadn't been sleeping properly.  "Hermione, we've got to do something."

She arched a brow.  "Any chance you could give me some specifics?"

"It's not there!" Harry exclaimed impatiently.  Then he frowned at himself.  "Oh.  Right.  See what you mean."  He sighed, took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes and then put the glasses back on.  "I've looked everywhere.  People keep trying to tell me it's just a mistake.  Like someone else must have it, or it's gone missing in the system, or something.  The Aurors still at Hogwarts sent me to the morgue there, and the people there sent me to Hagrid's hut 'cause they're using the outbuilding – you know, the one where the pregnant Thestrals have their foals? – they're using it as a morgue for the Death Eater bodies.  No one wanted them in the school.  Anyway, it wasn't there either.  And obviously I checked the Shrieking Shack.  Three times, actually, and–"

"Snape," Hermione said, finally cottoning on to the mission Harry had apparently set for himself.

"Of course Snape!"  Harry huffed impatience.  "Who did you think I meant?"

"You didn't say."

"I didn't?"

"No."

"Oh.  Sorry."  Harry ruffled his unruly hair into even greater unruliness.  "Haven't, er, been sleeping much."

That she could understand.  She waited while Harry helped himself to a glass of water from her bedside table.  He drank.  He set the glass down.  He smiled tiredly at Hermione, settled back in the chair and let his eyes wander for a moment around the rest of the ward.

He did an amusing double-take.

"Um – Hermione?"

"Yes Harry?"

"Why are you in a hospital bed?"

"I fell over.  Madam Pomfrey overreacted."

Madam Pomfrey was, unfortunately, only two beds away and changing the dressings on Padma Patil's Acromantula-related injuries.  The matron called over, "She collapsed through exhaustion, Mr. Potter, and you might remind your friend that I'm the one with the power to discharge her from the hospital's care."

Hermione blew out her cheeks in frustration.  "What I meant to say," she tried again, "is that I collapsed through exhaustion, in a really dramatic way, and fortunately Madam Pomfrey was on hand to take care of me."  Almost shouting, she added, "For which I'm very grateful!"

Padma smirked, as probably did the rest of the patients at this end of the ward.  Pomfrey got up and came over to Hermione's bedside.  The matron considered the two friends.  She pursed her lips and looked disapproving in that very focused way that only school matrons could manage.

"Oh, honestly, you two," the matron finally said, "haven't you taken on enough of late?"

Pomfrey looked pointedly at Harry's jiggling leg.  Harry looked pleadingly at her.  Hermione crossed her arms over her chest.

Pomfrey just shook her head.  "Fine.  Hermione, you may get dressed.  Your help has been much appreciated here, but I would be remiss if I allowed you to stay and assist us further.  Go and find somewhere comfortable and relaxing.  Try to rest, eat regularly, let your body begin to heal."  She glared at Harry again.  "And if you can't do that, try at least to ensure that your closest friends are keeping track of your well-being."

"Yes.  Fine.  We'll do that."  Hermione yanked the bedclothes back and tossed her feet over the edge of the bed.  "Right Harry?"

Harry's face went crimson.  Hermione had forgotten that at some point in the last sixteen hours Madam Pomfrey had removed her clothing and put her in a hospital gown.

Pomfrey just rolled her eyes and, with a flick of her wand, swished privacy curtains into place.  Harry turned his back, which at least was better than running for the exits as he might have done before their camping sojourn of the last six months.  Hermione ignored his embarrassment and got dressed.

"So you went looking for Professor Snape's body," she said conversationally as she pulled clothing over a body that was too bony and bruised to warrant close inspection.

"Yeah.  Didn't want him getting thrown in with the Death Eaters.  I know it's far too late, but I wanted to give him some respect."

She considered the silvery mess that Snape had leaked all over the floor of the Shrieking Shack, along with the blood from his torn-to-bits throat.  Harry had told her the most salient points he'd learned from those memories, but Hermione hadn't got all of it straightened out in her head yet.  Harry now seemed to think Snape was a hero who'd been unjustifiably abused his whole life.  Ron still figured Snape for a malicious git who'd changed sides out of convenience.  Hermione was pretty sure the truth was somewhere in the middle.

"Thing is," Harry went on, talking determinedly to the privacy curtain in front of his nose, "I'm worried.  There's still Death Eaters out there.  Some of them can do necromancy.  If Snape's body's been stolen by the bad guys..."

"You're thinking Inferius," Hermione said, grimacing at the idea even as she mentally reviewed all that she knew of such creatures from her extensive reading in various libraries.

"I'm trying really hard not to," Harry admitted.

She sat down to lace up her trainers.  "I'm decent."  Harry turned around.  "Fine.  So the body's been moved from the Shack.  He isn't in either of the makeshift morgues at the school."  Hermione tried to think logically.  "Is it possible Kingsley realised that Snape's body might be a target for any Death Eaters still at large?  Had it removed himself?"

"No.  I've already asked him if his Aurors saw to Snape's remains.  He gave no instructions."

Hermione stood up. "Right then.  I need to grab my bag from the staff room downstairs, then I'm all yours.  We'll get started."  She might have been dismissed from her role as volunteer helper at the over-stuffed St. Mungo's, but fate had offered her a new way of keeping occupied.

Harry caught her arm.  "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I've had a decent sleep and I ate all my porridge like a good girl."  She rolled her eyes.  "Please.  Can we just go and do something?"

They made their way down from the first floor ward to the ground level, starting to toss around theories about what might have happened to Snape's body.  Those theories quickly grew far-fetched.  As they emerged from the stairwell into the open reception area, Harry was saying:

"...the centaurs from the Forbidden Forest claimed his body in order to protect him.  Or honour him.  Or something?"

Hermione said, "Did you see hoof-marks in the Shack?"

"Um, no.  Okay, then maybe Hagrid's Acromantula friend sent lots of little skittery non-footprint-leaving spiders in to get the–"

He stopped there, interrupted by the familiar loud crack of Apparition.  Several heads turned towards the alcove where incoming emergency cases tended to arrive.  A man appeared there, staggering slightly under the weight of the unconscious body he held in his arms.

Harry gasped and then smacked himself in the face as he pressed his palm over his mouth.

Hermione swallowed hard and locked her knees against the tremor that shook her body.

It was Lucius Malfoy, looking as dishevelled as she had ever seen him.  His robes were torn and creased, his silver-blonde hair was lank and streaked with dirt and what looked like blood.  Most pertinently, he held in his arms a body that was far too tall and unwieldy for Malfoy to be carrying about like they were trying to recreate a scene from 'An Officer and a Gentleman'.  The body itself was partly swathed in dusty black robes, and the head which drooped lifelessly beyond Malfoy's left arm ended in a matted tangle of blacker-than-black hair.

Everyone in reception had stopped and stared, like customers in a Western saloon when the dangerous stranger makes an appearance.  Hermione waited for the honky-tonk piano to start up again, then realised that she was thinking nonsense.  She put it down to a need to distract herself from the fact that this was the first time she'd seen Malfoy at close quarters since the torturous ordeal she had suffered under his roof at the hands of his sister-in-law.

Malfoy said, "Someone help."  While his voice was not so commanding as usual, the way his legs crumpled beneath him and the weight of his charge finally spurred the Healers into action.

The body, undeniably Snape's, was levitated to a height where it could be examined.  Meanwhile Malfoy was also being subjected to diagnostic charms as he knelt on the floor, his head dropping forward, his energies clearly spent.

Two of the Aurors Shacklebolt had stationed at St. Mungo's moved closer.  One of them was already sending a Patronus with a message.

The Healer examining Snape exclaimed, "There's a pulse!"

Next to Hermione, Harry managed to gasp again in spite of his hand pressing his mouth.

Malfoy grumbled, "Of course there's a pulse, half-wit.  Not much point bringing him here if there wasn't."  He lifted his head and looked over to the Healers seeing to Snape.  "He's stable for now but he needs the antivenin for Nagini."

Snape was moved towards the lift, with his team of Healers exchanging various instructions.  An Auror went with them.  The remaining Auror was prevented from grasping Malfoy by the arm when a bustling Mediwizard pointed out that Malfoy had several injuries that required treatment.

Hermione realised that Harry was holding her hand very tightly with the hand which wasn't clamped over his mouth.  (It might have been her doing the holding-on, since she didn't really want to let go.)  She was glad of the contact when Malfoy was helped to his feet and looked around at the reception area.  His cold grey eyes noticed her.  Hermione felt a mortifying twist in the area of her bladder, and she shifted her position so that she could do her best to control the need to urinate.

For long, timeless moments her mind took her back to Malfoy Manor and tossed her through memories of pain, helplessness and violation.  She bit her lip hard enough to hurt, and hated herself for her own weakness.

Malfoy paused as the medical staff tried to bustle him away.  He drew himself up, shoulders back, and looked at Harry.

"Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Potter," he said quietly.  He glanced at Hermione.  "Miss Granger."  Then he turned and walked away, the remaining Auror following close behind.

Harry, finally, found his voice.  His hand dropped to his side.  "But..."

And that was all he could manage.

Hermione sighed.  "We'll find out soon enough," she said.  "Nothing we can do here, for now."

She needed to shower.  She needed to think.  And she probably needed to put in an appearance at the Burrow.

~~~


	2. Thanks for the Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked."
> 
> Lewis Carroll  
>  'Through the Looking-Glass' 1872
> 
>   
> 

The sun was setting over the tree-tops beyond the higgledy-piggledy structure of the Burrow.  The last of its light bronzed the ripples in the river.  Hermione sat there with Ron, his arm heavy over her shoulders.

She was thinking about the word 'ambivalence'.  She'd always liked it.  She'd liked using it when she was younger, because she knew it made people sit up and notice the breadth of her vocabulary.  She'd liked it in literary terms, because she'd always known, intuitively, that thoughts and feelings and opinions and reactions and all the things that went together to make up a human being were not simple, not clear-cut, not sensible and straightforward.  Human beings could not be trusted to define a rule for themselves and stick to it.  And it was perfectly normal to feel two different ways, two contradictory ways, about the same thing.

Ambivalence.  Like how she loved the security and familiarity of Ron's arm around her.  And how she felt trapped and stifled and resentful of it, too.

She sighed, then she began the conversation she'd been putting off all afternoon.

"I'm going away for a few days.  Maybe a bit longer."

Ron's arm stiffened but did not withdraw.  He was silent for a moment, then he said, "Your parents."

"Yes."

Another silence.  This Ron was new, or at least changed by recent events.  He'd never been this thoughtful, not for most of his time at school.  Ron was always quintessential Gryffindor: react first, think about it later.  Perhaps in time Ron's immediacy would reassert itself.  Perhaps it was his grief and his trauma and the guilt he still carried with him after his brief desertion that had made him this way.  Or maybe he'd just grown up a bit.  They were all guilty of that.

Eventually he asked, softly and carefully, "Does it have to be now?"

She'd been expecting a complaint, or whinging, or a guilt-trip – everything seemed to be about guilt, these days – and Ron's question made her resentment surge because it was so bloody _reasonable_.  She couldn't use it to claim he was being selfish.  It wouldn't give her the moral high ground.

It bothered her that she wanted so badly to take that position.

But Ron had set the tone – a reasonable question should prompt a reasonable discussion – so she followed along.  "It's been three weeks, now, since Hogwarts.  I've got everything together that I need."  She frowned into the distance.  "I could leave it another month, even two.  But at this point the longer I leave it, the smaller my chances of success become."

"Right."  Ron nodded, rubbed her back and then took his arm away.  "Reversing the charm gets harder, the longer it's in place."

"Yes.  Up to a point."

She'd set everything up for a year.  After twelve months the False Memory Charm she had cast on her parents would become permanent, and no witch or wizard on the planet would be able to reverse it.  It had seemed like a sensible approach, because False Memory Charms without any such failsafe would eventually fade, and the true memories would reassert themselves.  Hermione had figured that if she was in no position to return to her parents within twelve months of sending them away, she was probably not going to be able to do so at all.  It had seemed kinder, in those circumstances, to give them a life without loss.

And now she was back to thinking about ambivalence.  The way she yearned to have her parents back in her life, offering that unconditional love and all the security of family and home, was warring with a sense of dread so stark, so bitter, that the desire to simply leave things as they were was potent.  Her parents would be fine if she didn't remove the charm.  They wouldn't miss what they didn't know they had, and the life she had steered them towards in Australia was one they'd talked about choosing for themselves, so she was assured of their happiness.

Because the process was – of course – not without risk.  She could screw up the counter-charm and permanently damage her parents' memories, even their very minds.  She could successfully remove the false memories only to be confronted by two very angry people who found themselves living unrecognisable lives in a different country thanks to the manipulations of someone they should have been able to trust implicitly.  She could end up with two parents whose proper and intact memories had taught them one very specific thing: to fear their daughter.

It could all go so horribly wrong.

Ron said, "If you could leave it just another month.  Even maybe two weeks?"

Hermione pinched her lips together hard enough to hurt.  She waited until the shivers faded before she replied.  "It has to be now.  If I wait much longer I might lose what courage I have."

Ron turned away from the water's edge to look back at the lights in the windows of his family home.  For a moment he looked as torn as she felt, and when Hermione realised why, she was taken by surprise.

"Oh, no, Ron," she said, "it's okay.  I'm not expecting you to drop everything and come with me."

He looked back at her, shocked.  "You're not?  But–"

"Love," she said, and meant the word, "I'm not that selfish."  She tried a smile, even as Ron's expression didn't follow the script, didn't soften and take on that dopey, besotted look he tended to wear when the two of them were managing real tenderness.  Ron actually looked cautious and confused.  She tried to clarify.  "Your mum needs you here," she said.  "George needs you here.  And I think you need them."  She reached up to his hair and brushed his fringe from his eyes.  "And I need to do this.  While I can still try."

She didn't tell him that she also needed some time alone.  He didn't need to hear that.

"What about Harry?" Ron suggested.

Hermione shook her head.  "He's too busy with the trials."

Ron grunted.  "Ginny doesn't like him spending so much time with Shacklebolt."

"Ginny will have plenty of opportunity in the future to monopolise Harry's time.  And he sees her most days, doesn't he?"

Ron shrugged.  "Ginny and Mum are both kind of put out that Harry didn't move in here when the rest of us came back."  He looked apologetic.  "And that you didn't, for that matter."

"Oh?"  Hermione couldn't find it in herself to feel guilt for failing to meet Molly's expectations, since she had a finite amount of guilt to call upon and all of it was currently assigned to more important issues.  "What about you?  Are you put out?"

"Not as much as I thought I'd be," he hedged.  "I mean, spending time with you, these last few weeks since...since it all happened – those moments have been the best ones.  You know?"

"I'm assuming you aren't just referring to the sex?" she quipped.

"Well, not _just_ that."  He grinned, looking like the old Ron for a minute.  "It's like...I dunno.  I need to be here with my family.  I know they need me.  And it feels right.  It feels good.  But – Merlin! – sometimes it's good to get some time away, too.  Even if it's just a visit to Grimmauld Place, or a walk out here with you, or whatever."

Ambivalence.  Ron was talking her language.

"I'll be back before you notice I'm gone," she assured him.

"No you won't," he said quietly.  "But I'll be here waiting.  However it goes.  And I'll be glad to see you."

He put his arm around her again.  They leaned back against the embankment, watching the last of the light.  If they were going to make love that evening before she returned to Islington, they'd need to move further away from the house.  But Ron didn't seem that bothered, and Hermione felt no great need to do so either.

They were good when they were like this, the two of them: quiet, together, connected by their mutual support and understanding.  Times like these, it was almost enough to convince Hermione that they had a genuine foundation for a long-term future together.  But then again, it was also times like these when Hermione suspected that the strengths in their relationship were all to do with friendship and the platonic love they'd shared since childhood, and the sex was going to end up complicating everything...

Yeah.  Sometimes she really hated her propensity for ambivalence.

~~~

"Please," Harry said to Hermione two days later, "it needn't take long.  Just half an hour."

She narrowed her eyes at her bag as she drew the ties together.  "I don't _have_ half an hour.  My Portkey is scheduled for one o'clock."

"Please!  I need to be able to talk to him.  You understand that, don't you?"

"Harry–"

"Snape's the only one who can tell me.  And those memories he gave me – I thought he wanted to share.  Finally."  He nudged his glasses up and out of the way so he could rub his eyes.  "Every time I open my mouth, try to start a conversation, he's ready with an insult.  Well, when he bothers saying anything at all, that is.  The bloke's got world champion pedigree when it comes to the sport of ignoring people.  Or steady, unimpressed stares."  He huffed a sigh.  "Look – I don't know what to do.  I can't...I can't _strategise_ these things like you can."

"Ron's the strategist.  Ask him."

"Ron thinks not talking to Snape, ever again, is far and away the best choice."

Which was a fair point.  Still.  "I don't know what you expect _me_ to say to him that'll make a difference.  It isn't as if he liked me."  She winced.  "Probably likes me even less after the Shack."

"It isn't about liking, it's about respect.  He always had more for you.  Just half an hour, Hermione.  Use your silly big brain and your debating skills and convince Severus Snape to talk to me – _please_!"

"Harry."  She breathed, controlled herself, counted mentally to ten because she didn't want to part from her friend on bad terms when she was on the cusp of what might be the most important journey she ever made.  "When I get back, I promise, I will speak to him.  I would have wanted to anyway."

"But you're going to be gone for days!"

"Probably," Hermione acknowledged.  "And I'm really sorry I have to leave you here like this."  That was a lie.  Still, sometimes relationships needed lies.  It was a shame, because lying was a skill she'd never really mastered; she tried to move the discussion on before Harry noticed her flaming cheeks.  "You know how I set up the False Memory Charm.  You were the one who actually bothered to ask questions at the time.  You know I have to do this now."

The two of them sighed in tandem.  They both looked away, at anything but each other.

Into the awkwardness of the moment, Harry said, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

She looked up.  "What?"

"Ron isn't going with you either, is he?"

She swallowed.  "Of course not.  His family needs him.  And he needs them."

"I just thought – I mean, you and Ron, and..."  Harry huffed.  "I didn't even think.  I've been so caught up with the Wizengamot stuff–"

"And that's important," Hermione said firmly.  "I'd stay and help you with it, only..."  Her words tailed off.

And Harry demonstrated that he had not yet undergone an entire empathy-bypass when it came to his closest friends.  "No, I get it.  You need to get away from here for a while.  Bit of breathing space.  Just as much as you need to find your mum and dad."

She sighed and checked her watch.  "I should get going.  I need to check in by quarter to."

"Look – I can come.  If you want.  Kingsley can fast-track me a Portkey and I'll follow in a day or so.  I didn't realise you were going to be on your own."

Hermione hoisted her bag to her shoulder and looked around the room she thought of as hers at Grimmauld Place.  "If all goes well, I won't be on my own for long," she said.  She wondered why she was actively discouraging his company now, when she felt like she'd been silently bemoaning its likely absence for days.  "Look, I'll be fine.  You've got enough on your plate.  Just keep focused on the cases.  Trust your own instincts.  And don't get wound up by the fact that Professor Snape can't keep a civil tongue in his head.  He couldn't manage it when he was relatively healthy and whole; why would you assume he'd be any nicer with a great big hole in his neck and no ability to cast more than a weak Lumos?"

Harry moved to precede her out of the room and down the stairs.  Over his shoulder, he said, "I know.  I did actually try to be understanding, you know.  Sympathetic.  Both times.  I just thought – well, now he doesn't have to pretend any more.  Now he doesn't have to keep the bad guys thinking he's with them."  Hermione saw his hand on the banister turn white-knuckle tense for a moment.  "I thought we had some common ground now."

"Give it time," Hermione said.  "He's trapped in a hospital room, an Auror on guard by the door and no ability to pick and choose his visitors.  He's four days out of a magically induced coma.  Just because the venom has cleared his system doesn't mean it isn't going to take weeks for the damage to heal.  He's in pain.  So give it time.  The best thing you can do for him right now is make sure that when the healers give him permission to leave the hospital he doesn't have to walk straight into a cell at Azkaban."

The two of them left the house.  She looked at Harry as she prepared to Apparate to the Ministry of Magic.  "I'll let you know if it all goes pear-shaped and I need some help," she said.  "Otherwise I'll see you when I get back."

"I'm coming to see you off," Harry said.  "I might even wave a hankie.  Deal with it."

He Disapparated with a small sonic boom, and Hermione frowned at the empty space Harry had left behind.  That was the second time one of her two closest friends had behaved in a way that denied her a feeling of moral superiority.  They'd both of them been supportive, thoughtful, concerned; they'd given her no option to feel taken for granted.  She couldn't grind her teeth at the injustice of this treatment, and this annoyed her as much now as it had two days ago with Ron.

What the hell was the matter with her?  Was she looking for a fight?

She shook the confusion away.  Confusion was not good, pre-Apparition.  She gathered her focus and sent her body to the Ministry of Magic.

~~~

Port Augusta, in South Australia, was roughly a three hour drive north of Adelaide, or a little less than an hour by plane, or 3.18 seconds by the standard local Portkey.  Adelaide's equivalent of the Department of Magical Transportation set her up with the Portkey less than twenty minutes after she'd ported in, delaying her only to register her wand, check that she was not carrying plant life either mundane or magical, and advise her that her current visitor status within the bounds of Wizarding Australasia would last for one month before Magical Law Enforcement would come looking for her.

Once these preliminaries were sorted, Hermione was free to go about her business.  The magical community in Port Augusta was non-existent, but she'd anticipated that and had visited a _Bureau de Change_ in order to buy some Australian Muggle currency before leaving the UK.  Hermione's Portkey delivered her to a nicely private stand of trees and shrubs, alongside a car-park which seemed to serve numerous industrial units ranging either side of a wide road that ran parallel to some railway lines.

It had been a warm spring afternoon in London when Hermione had entered the Ministry of Magic with Harry.  She now stood in darkness, the buildings around her still.  It was almost eleven o'clock at night, and it was winter in the southern hemisphere.

Hermione checked the immediate vicinity out of habit, then she cast a derivation of the Point-Me charm: a spell that she had designed to home in on the one object she could be absolutely sure her parents would still have with them: her mother's wedding ring.  The charm produced a silvery trail through the air that only she could see, leading away to the south east.

So far so good.

Hermione had never seen the place her parents had adopted as their new home; she'd kept track of all that they had done since receiving their new identities via third parties.  She didn't even know their address, because she'd always believed that having that knowledge in her head might prove dangerous.  The last twelve months had taught her a level of caution that some might describe as paranoia.  While it was a sensible attitude and it had kept her alive, it was – she had to admit – exhausting to keep up.

She wondered how Severus Snape had managed it for so long.  The constant guarding of his words and actions, the need to present different faces to different people...every morning when he'd woken up, he must have been at least peripherally aware that a single small mistake on his part could mean that the day he faced might turn out to be his last.  It was hard enough to live a life of caution and fear for a few desperate months; how the hell did anyone manage it for decades at a time?

Odd, that she was thinking about Snape.  Probably Harry's fault.

She started walking.  The area was quiet and dark and did not feel safe, so she Disillusioned herself.  She tried to keep herself calm and reviewed her plans for the days ahead, but it was hard not to dwell on how she was half a planet away from anyone who knew and cared about her, on her own, in a strange industrial wasteland at night.

Ten minutes into her walk she saw a battered advertising board beside a junction, which informed her of the nearby presence of a motel.  Since showing up at her parents' house so late was not a good plan, even as Hermione craved that sense of belonging, a motel seemed sensible.  She dispelled the Point-Me and followed the directions on the board instead, and found herself outside a two-storey brick building with a railed balcony running all the way around the upper floor.  There was a light on, visible through the glass of the main door, even though the hour was late and the road outside was traffic-free.

She almost forgot to cancel her Disillusionment charm before ringing the reception bell.

Ten minutes later she was in a budget room on the upper floor.  It was cheap, it was clean, and the only other guest currently staying at the motel was in one of the self-contained units on the ground floor.  The room had a door with a lock, a ring-binder stuffed with leaflets and brochures offering tourist information and local takeaway services, and it was a long way away from anyone who might recognise her face and make a fuss.

Ironic, really, that she'd ported thousands of miles to a different continent, relieved to get away from the recognition, but with the sole intention of making two people who didn't know her at all remember her and forgive.

~~~

A few hours later, when there was sufficient natural light beyond the curtains to justify no longer lying down and pretending to sleep, Hermione sat up, took four paracetamol for the near-constant headache that her insomnia provoked, and read through every leaflet in the room.

By half past eight in the morning she had showered, descended to the ground floor and politely listened to the breakfast suggestions made by the friendly woman now guarding the reception desk.  She then headed out, telling herself that she'd find a sandwich later on because for now her stomach couldn't face any food.

She cast her Point-Me spell again, and she walked.

The street where her parents lived was spectacularly ordinary.  The bungalows along each side enjoyed notably wide plots, space being at less of a premium in a big empty country like Australia than it was in England's cluttered south-east.  Each property seemed tidy enough, well cared for, though they weren't what you might describe as pretty buildings.  Still, the neighbourhood was unthreatening.  South Australia's early winter climate was mild, a bit cloudy, but in spite of the switch in planetary hemispheres Hermione didn't feel the seasonal adjustment particularly.  She had known chillier May days than this in the Highlands.

She walked past her parents' bungalow, trying not to demonstrate her interest in the property in case the local Neighbourhood Watch people – if they had such a thing in Australia – got suspicious.  She couldn't try a Disillusionment charm in a well-lit open space like this street, with people coming and going.  She wondered whether she should have borrowed Harry's cloak for the trip.  Too late to think about that now.

Hermione walked the street twice, until one of the locals offered her a good morning and asked her if she was looking for someone in particular.  She fumbled a request for a street she vaguely remembered walking past, accepted the unneeded directions with profuse thanks, and headed back that way.  Once she was out of sight she consulted the small town map she'd taken from her motel room and walked towards the nearest set of shops.

She told herself she was doing this because she really needed to eat: to take better care of herself.  The fact that paying attention to her non-existent appetite had just become more attractive an option than doing the job she had come here to do spoke volumes.

She forced down half of a tuna sandwich and a badly made latte in a coffee shop near to the hospital that seemed to make up a good portion of this part of town.  The rest of the sandwich she wrapped up and deposited in her bag.  She didn't want it, but after the last six months she had lost the ability to throw food away.  Perhaps she'd manage it later on for her dinner.

Sitting in that cafe window, watching Port Augusta go by on this pale grey morning, Hermione forced herself to admit something: this place, this life, was nothing like the dream retirement she had imagined for her parents.  She could remember the pictures that had so enchanted her mum and dad years earlier, when they'd first discussed the idea of emigrating with an embarrassed sense of 'oh, but this is probably just a pipe-dream...'  There'd been a bright blue sky, a hillside house with large shining windows enjoying the view over an expanse of water.  Probably Sydney Harbour, now she thought about it.  Ever since Hermione had arranged this escape for her parents, she'd always had that idyllic image in mind when she thought of them.

And of course it had been nonsense.  She'd been lucky, in that the house in Banstead had long since been bought and paid for so there were no mortgage payments for her to keep up.  She'd also been lucky that her solicitor had been able to arrange locums for the dental practice, to keep the business going once her parents had forgotten that it was theirs to run.  Her solicitor had informed her before she'd made this trip that both her parents had found work here in Port Augusta – of course they had, since Australia wasn't open to immigrants without careers and prospects – so their current financial situation was stable.

But as pleasant as many people probably found Port Augusta, Hermione had to acknowledge that her mum and dad had hardly spent the last nine months living the dream.  And maybe there was a small part of her that had hoped to see her parents living in such golden, halcyon happiness that to even _think_ of returning them to England would have been a travesty.

Now she'd seen this place, she knew she couldn't chicken out and leave things as they were.

She finished her coffee only because it drew out the time she could delay returning to her parents' bungalow.  She mentally reviewed her notes.  She rehearsed the introductory statements she might make and considered how those conversations might progress.

She was – there was no denying it – terrified by the prospect of how this day might end.

There was nothing more to do, except to do it.  Time to find her Gryffindor courage.

~~~

"Good morning," Hermione said to the woman who did not realise they were closely related.  She couldn't look at her mother's face without losing herself to a wave of emotion, so she stared at the paperwork attached to the clipboard that she had prepared.  "Mrs. Wilkins?"

Her mother said, quite pleasantly, "That's right.  Can I help you?"

No accent.  There was no accent.  Her mother sounded as English as Hermione herself did.  Was nine months too short a time to pick up on the regional speech patterns?

"I'm sorry to drop by unannounced," Hermione said, reciting her opening speech as she had done over and over to the mirror in recent days.  "My name's Granger."  She risked a look up from her clipboard, just to see if there was any reaction, but her mother's expression was only patiently expectant.  "I was in the area visiting another property – I'm from Holland and Garth."  Her cheeks immediately burned; lying was bad enough, lying to her mother was appalling.

Her mother didn't comment on Hermione's blushes.  She just said, "Oh, you're with the rental agency?  You'd better come in then."

Hermione followed her mother into the bungalow.  The property was rented rather than mortgaged, because her parents had left England unaware that they were homeowners; all their savings had been spent with the move.  Perhaps, having had almost a year to settle and work and accumulate fresh savings, Monica and Wendell Wilkins were thinking about getting on to the property ladder again.

The living room of the bungalow was furnished in a way that didn't remind Hermione of the house in Banstead at all.  Maybe the house was rented furnished.  Or maybe Australia didn't have the same furniture options in their shops.  Or maybe when she'd rewritten her parents' identities she had changed more than their names and their desire to practise dentistry in south-east England; maybe she'd altered their likes and dislikes, their taste in art and food and entertainment.  Maybe she'd turned them into fundamentally different people.

She sometimes wondered how much of herself was made of memory.  How much of anyone.

"Well then, Miss Granger.  What can I do for you?" her mother asked, indicating that she should take a seat on the sofa which stood beside a coffee table made of angled chrome and smoked glass.

Hermione sat down.  She needed to breathe a few times before she could speak.  Panic was threatening to consume her.

"Um – should I maybe speak to both you and your husband?" Hermione said.

Her mother frowned at this, probably at the inadvertent hint at chauvinism.  "My husband's working a Saturday shift at our practice.  What's this about, Miss Granger?"

Hermione sighed.  She needed the two of them together.  Resetting her mother's memories and then watching the fall-out as one of her parents reacted to the truth while the other one arrived home to believe his wife had somehow gone crazy...no.  That would not work.  Plus, the original charm she had cast had been directed at the two of them together.  Dividing the counter-charm up into individual targets would only complicate the magic further.

"Miss Granger?"

She looked up, startled.  Her mother was beginning to look concerned.  "Oh!  Oh, I'm sorry."  She tucked hair behind her ears and sat up straighter.  "Forgive me, Mrs. Wilkins, I'm not quite with it today."  She looked again at her clipboard to remind herself of the fabrication she was trying to purvey.  "I called by to give you advance warning that this property may not be available for the full twelve month lease when it comes up for renewal in, er..."  She pretended to consult her paperwork.

"October, was when the lease began," her mother supplied.  "May I ask why the situation has changed?"

"The owner of the bungalow is downsizing his property portfolio," Hermione lied.  "He's looking to sell off half a dozen properties as he nears retirement.  Has his eye on a penthouse apartment in Adelaide, I believe."

Her mother nodded, then frowned.  "Are you well, Miss Granger?  You seem a little flushed."

"I think I'm going down with something," Hermione replied, using the excuse gratefully.  "Anyway, there's no immediate cause for concern, and obviously the proper notice would be served if the owner does indeed decide to put this house on the market.  But as I was in the area, I thought I'd drop by and tip you off about this likelihood.  Just in case you wanted to start considering your own plans well in advance."

Her mother sat back looking thoughtful.  "I must admit," she said, "we were thinking of moving away.  Out to the eastern coast.  But we think we'll need at least another twelve months before we've got a deposit together."

"If you want," Hermione said, "I can come back later on, or tomorrow if you like, when your husband is here too.  Show you some of the other properties Holland and Garth have available in this area?"

Her mother sighed and nodded.  "Seems sensible, while we have you here."  A frown creased her brow, and the look of concern she gave Hermione made her want to cry.  "You know, Miss Granger, you honestly don't look very well.  Can I at least offer you some tea?"

"Oh, um–"

"English tea?  Twinings do a very nice Ceylon, and from your accent you're also a newcomer to these shores.  Will you join me?"

So not all of her parents' tastes had changed.  Hermione considered.  Tea, with her mum.  Small talk.  Watching that beautiful, familiar, much-missed face and not being able to say anything other than the lies that would keep her here until she could perform her counter-charm.

It sounded like some kind of torment.

"You're very kind, Mrs. Wilkins," she said carefully.  "And I can't even begin to tell you how tempted I am.  Unfortunately I've got three other appointments this afternoon."

"Oh, I see.  Perhaps later on, then, as you suggest.  Wendell will be home around half past five, if that suits you?"

"That's fine."

"Right, then."  They stood up, and her mother led her around to the front door again.  "We'll see you later, Miss Granger."

Hermione left the house and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do for the next five hours.

~~~

She walked back to the shops, then hopped on a local bus that took her north around numerous residential streets, all similar in style, until it reached the town centre.  Hermione found a small park and walked around for a bit, then she remembered a leaflet she had read in her motel room that morning and she wandered back to the main road.  She found another bus route heading further north, over the Spencer Gulf and into Port Augusta West, and she rode this as far as she could.  A short walk further, and she had reached the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden.

It was as good a place to kill time as any.  Entry was free, and a map of the extensive site was provided which detailed numerous walks through various terrains.  She wandered some more, trying to look at things, trying to be interested, but all the while she was pummelled by every thought in her tired, aching head.

On a boardwalk lookout at the edge of the gardens, with mountains in the distance and the waters of the gulf below, Hermione caught sight of dolphins leaping and frolicking in the surf.  It was the kind of thing that Muggles might have called 'magical'.  Hermione found she struggled even to raise a smile.

~~~

At just before six pm, local time, Hermione stood in her parents' living room and studied the two people on the sofa.  She'd cast a sedative charm that Madam Pomfrey had taught her during her stint at St. Mungo's, then she'd gone ahead and reversed the False Memory Charm.  She was as sure as she could be that she'd got it right, but the proof would only emerge once her parents stirred from their magically induced sleep.  Better to let them be still for a while, as their synapses fired and their brains recovered.

She turned away and double-checked the items she had set out on the smoked-glass coffee table.  The letter she had written was front and centre; hopefully her parents would immediately recognise her handwriting and look to that first.  The stack of Daily Prophets was to the right of the letter: specific editions picked out from the last three years, opened to those articles which helped describe the escalation of events with Voldemort.  Alongside these magical periodicals were a handful of Muggle newspapers, mostly locals from around the UK, containing reports of various tragic incidents which had been put down to gas explosions and other catastrophic accidents.

To the left of the letter was the evidence Harry had persuaded Shacklebolt to duplicate for Hermione from the offices of Magical Law Enforcement.  This included the well-thumbed list removed from the cooling corpse of Antonin Dolohov: the names and addresses of Muggles who had had the audacity to produce magical offspring; Muggles who could not be suffered to live, lest they dared to produce further evidence that magic was not defined by purity of blood.  Many of the names on this list had a heartbreakingly conclusive line scratched through them.  The addresses beside these names matched the incidents reported in the Muggle press.

At the top of this list, unsullied by a cross-through, was the name Granger and an address in Banstead.

All the information was here.  Now she could only wait to see what happened next.  Her courage had carried her this far.  Perhaps tonight she had earned a few hours of rest.

Hermione let herself out of her parents' bungalow, aware that she still had a duty to return and face the music come the morning.  She'd decided on this approach days ago: once the spell was cast, she would give her parents some time alone to understand the events that had led to their daughter's actions.  It had seemed far and away the most likely strategy to cut through their initial shock and anger, and thus to minimise the accusations which would inevitably follow.

Let them understand that innocent people had been murdered in cold blood by dark wizards, against whom those innocents had no possible defence.  Let them realise that the Muggle government had been unable to protect its citizens.  Let them consider, for a moment, whether they'd be alive right now if their daughter hadn't take the extreme measures that she had.

They'd be horrified and outraged, of course.  Harry had been appalled by the idea of frightening her parents so badly and had advocated a softer approach.  Ron, though, had sadly nodded his support: his strategist's mind had recognised that the more Hermione played down the events of the war, the harder it would be to justify the choice she'd made.  She needed her parents to be more afraid of Voldemort's atrocities than they were of their daughter.

Time would tell.  But if her plan worked out, tomorrow morning would see her parents asking questions like "How could such things have happened in this day and age?" rather than the infinitely less answerable "How could our own daughter do this to us?"

And if it was all a bit more Slytherin than Gryffindor, then so be it.  Hermione was three months away from her nineteenth birthday.  She was no longer so young and ignorant as to believe that people could be defined by a single characteristic.

~~~


	3. Separation Anxiety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan."
> 
> Proverb

The door to Hermione's bedroom in Grimmauld Place shuddered with three resounding bangs.  Someone was kicking it, which meant that her visitor was either an enthused Ron, or a Harry that was encumbered with something.

"You awake?" Harry's voice called, apparently oblivious to the fact that the walls were still vibrating and half of the terrace would have been disturbed were it not for the wards on the property.

"No I'm bloody not," she yelled back, then tried to bury her head underneath a pillow.

The door sprang open and footsteps encroached into her territory.  "I brought you some tea," Harry's voice announced.  "When did you get in?"

Hermione groaned, then surrendered to the need to interact with the bloke who was currently providing a roof over her head, rent-free.  She dragged herself clear of pillows and sat up, bleary-eyed.  "Morning," she muttered.

"It's after one pm," Harry pointed out, as he set a mug of tea down on the bedside table.

"Is it."  She couldn't manage to sound interested.  "And to answer your question, I left Adelaide at two o'clock this afternoon."  Harry's face twisted into incomprehension.  "It's Australia, you numpty.  We're nine and a half hours behind them."

"Oh.  Right."  He sat down on the edge of her bed.  "Sorry.  So it was, what, pretty early when you got here?"

"About dawn."

"Manage any sleep?"

She huffed at him and took a sip of tea.  It seemed Harry had forgotten that, like most people with functioning taste buds, she hated it when the delicate flavour of tea was overwhelmed by the cloying presence of sugar.  She set the mug aside and said, "Yuck."

Harry frowned, took a sip from the mug he held, made a face and then swapped the mugs over.  "Sorry.  Try that one."  He drank from the sugary mug and sighed satisfaction.  "So go on, then.  How did it go?"

Hermione thought back to the two meetings she'd had with her parents since their memories had been successfully restored.  The first had been emotional, difficult and cut short when her mother had decided that some more time was needed for everyone to calm down.  The second had been longer, cooler, horrifyingly polite and utterly heartbreaking.  Hermione had left the house in Port Augusta thinking that her restored parents were more like strangers to her than Monica and Wendell Wilkins had been.

"Okay," she said.  "I s'pose.  The spell worked, which was the main thing."

"Great!"

"I mean, it was always going to take some time, wasn't it?"

"Course.  So – are they coming home?"

She hid her face briefly in her mug, burned her tongue as she drank, then she frowned at the surface of her tea.  "They, er, haven't decided."

Harry was quiet a moment, then he set his tea down and tried to offer a consoling hug.  Hermione couldn't bear it, not his sympathy, not anyone's sympathy.  It would make her break, and she was getting familiar with the need to set her shoulders and swallow her fears and just get on with things.  Breaking was not, in any shape or form, an option; if she broke, she was not convinced that she'd be able to put herself back together.

She ducked under Harry's arms and shuffled out of bed.  "It's okay," she said without looking at her friend.  "Really.  These things take time, and if they end up staying out there then it's fine.  More than anything else, I want them to be safe and happy."

"Hermione–"

"So it's fine, anyway."  She shrugged into her dressing gown and then pulled it tight across her chest, holding it in place with arms wrapped defensively around herself.  "Now how've things been going here, the last few days?  Any progress with the investigations?"

She had to look back at him when he didn't answer her immediately.  He frowned, concerned, but in the end he accepted her need to change the subject.  "Dumbledore's portrait came through for some more of the evidence for Snape," Harry said.  "Although the man himself is still not talking to me.  And there've been lots of discussions about the Malfoys.  I'd be interested in your take on those."

Hermione grabbed her shower stuff and a set of clean clothes.  "Give me a chance to wash, then you can lay it all out for me."

Harry nodded, hesitated once more as if considering whether to say something else, then he smiled sadly at her and left her bedroom.

~~~

The next day at the Burrow, Ron was being weird.  Quiet.  A bit stand-offish.  Like the Anti-Ron, or something.  Hermione wasn't sure what she'd done, but she suspected that her boyfriend had finally worked himself up into a sense of indignant betrayal because she'd had the temerity to leave him without access to her vagina for a few days.

A couple of times, now, she'd offered to go out for a walk with him.  It was a pleasant enough day and they could at least find some privacy for Ron to work off that head of steam and then take solace in some make-up sex.  But Ron wasn't interested; he constantly found reasons for them to stay in the house.  Not only that: he didn't even want to leave the ground floor spaces and the nearby presence of his extended family.  This confused Hermione, since it indicated that access to her vagina wasn't _actually_ Ron's overriding concern: a notion which was borderline alarming, considering that Ron Weasley was an eighteen year old male and, as such, utterly libido-driven.

Molly provided what she called a 'late lunch', though it was gone four o'clock.  Ron partook of the meal, naturally enough, so he hadn't transformed himself so completely that his other insatiable appetites had been assuaged.  He accepted Hermione's curt report that the restoration of her parents' memories had been a technical success and that their choices for the future were being considered.  He didn't even complain when she told him she'd be heading back to Australia to meet with them again in a few weeks' time.

Molly, showing more sensitivity than Hermione generally associated with the Weasley matriarch, asked some perceptive questions about her parents' reaction to the removal of the False Memory Charm, then tactfully changed the subject before Hermione's obvious discomfort could become oppressive.

The hours ticked by.  The day felt wrong.  For some god-awful reason that Hermione couldn't quite put her finger on, it felt like her whole world was in the process of quietly falling apart.

Ginny supplied some much-needed distraction after they'd eaten.  She returned from an afternoon with Harry to convey the news that Harry had decided not to return to Hogwarts to undertake the final year of NEWT-level studies that he'd missed.  Therefore, Ginny announced, she had decided to do the same.

Molly, of course, wasn't having this, and a blazing row erupted.  Charlie, who was taking extended leave from his Romanian dragons to help his family through their time of bereavement, showed up to take his mother's side, since Ron couldn't really weigh in with an opinion when he had no doubt made the same choice as Harry.  Ginny glared at Hermione when Molly pointed out that Hermione, being the "brains of the operation" – Molly's own words, though they made Ron's cheeks flush – would also be back at Hogwarts come September, and by the way, seventeen years old was far too young to be setting up house with a boyfriend, even when said boyfriend _was_ the saviour of Wizarding Britain.

Hermione refused to involve herself, in spite of appeals and invitations from both Molly and Ginny.  Actually, she was lost in her own thoughts.  She hadn't thought as far ahead as the new school year, but now that she _was_ thinking about it, the idea of returning to the scene of so much death and violence and suffering did not exactly fill her with delight.  Still.  She was Hermione Granger.  It wasn't as if she was going to be given a choice.  She would sit her NEWTs and pass them with aplomb, because if she did not then it would render her entire Hogwarts career a failure.

As she dwelt on all of this, she recognised something else.  Returning to England from Australia without her grateful, relieved parents in tow also counted as a failure.  This was why she was having such difficulty telling people about what had happened.  She wasn't used to admitting that she'd failed.

Ginny eventually stormed off, yelling about being treated like a little kid and stamping her feet as she climbed the stairs, thus proving that 'a little kid' was exactly what she was.  Molly shook her head and returned to the kitchen.  Charlie caught Hermione's eye and shrugged his resignation, then left the room to follow Ginny up the stairs.  Hermione considered that, as fond as she was of Ron's little sister, three school terms spent in Ginny's close company were likely to be a trial.  The simple fact was that she'd always felt older than her friends at school, and recent events had only widened that chasm.

And why hadn't Harry _told_ her he'd made such an important decision about his future?  Why hadn't Ron, for that reason, since he and Harry would no doubt have worked this out together?  Was this evidence of yet another failure: that of her closest friendships?

At least it explained Ron's awkwardness with her today.  He'd decided to follow Harry into Auror training, and just as Ginny now wanted to avoid any extended separation between herself and Harry, Ron would want the same with Hermione.  He just didn't know how to ask her not to return to Hogwarts...

Or was it something else?  Was it that he _knew_ she'd return to school, and he wasn't prepared to spend a year being faithful to a girlfriend he could only see infrequently, and thus he wanted to put things on hold?  Or even knock the whole thing on the head and settle for the friendship that – truth be told – Hermione suspected was the strongest aspect to what they had together anyway?

She had a sudden and powerful suspicion that she was about to be given the old heave-ho.

Ron said, "Hermione–"

She anticipated him.  "I can't do this today, Ron.  Not today.  Give me chance to get my head round what happened with my parents, first."

"But–"

"No!  Not today.  It's too much.  It's all too bloody much."

She stood up.  Her hands were shaking, so she clasped them together to try to disguise her distress.  She needed to get clear of the Burrow before she exploded with anger and fear and resentment and self-loathing and – oh, _hell_ – the tiredness, the constant, dizzying, aching exhaustion that coloured everything she did and said and thought.  These things were clouding the good feelings that should have come from being in the presence of her friends and allies.

"Look, it doesn't have to–"

"I don't want to hear it, Ron!" she snapped.  "Less than two days ago my own parents told me that yes, fine, they remember who I am but they aren't sure they want me in their lives any more.  Never mind, though – I've got another family, haven't I?  I've got Ron and Harry, so I'm not on my own.  Brilliant!  Except now I find out that my two closest friends, my other family, have decided what to do with their futures, and those futures don't involve me.  And – by the way – they did it without even letting me in on the discussions!"

"It's not–"

"So what have I got to look forward to?" Hermione demanded, shouting over Ron's voice because she wasn't sure she could hear him speak without her anger turning to tears.  She wasn't going to break; she couldn't afford to break; she held on to the anger, blew on the embers, welcomed their heat.  "I've got a few more weeks to wait before I have to take the train up to the very same place where I saw people _die_.  Horribly.  And I've got to stay there for three terms with a gaggle of children whose emotional maturity is going to make _me_ feel like they're six years old and I'm ninety-bloody-four!"  She pushed her hair down flat, as it had started to rise with crackling static.  "So that's me!  On my own, day in, day out.  For three terms.  And I'll have to walk past the place where that fucking wall collapsed _every_ day.  Guess what I'll be seeing in my head every time I do that!  And I'll be treated like a child again, with all the rules and restrictions and kowtowing to authority – how do you think _that's_ going to feel after this last year, eh?  And there won't even be any respite in the holidays, will there?  Because what kind of home do I have to go to?  My own bloody parents, and they look at me and all they can think is: shit, it's Hermione, run fast, run far!"

Ron stared at her, high spots of red on his cheeks, the rest of his face pallid.  He looked both angry and heartbroken: maybe for her; maybe for himself.  His mouth dropped open then closed again.

"That's my life, right now," she said more quietly.  "That's what I have to look forward to.  I don't get the chance to try to move on from it all, like you and Harry.  I know what's expected of me.  I know what I expect of myself.  So I just have to do it.  And now I know I have to do it on my own."

Pressure welled up in her throat and threatened to escape into a sob.  She swallowed hard and clamped a hand over her mouth, then she shook her head firmly.

Not today: that was all she could try to convey.  She sent him one last, desperate look and then turned to leave the Burrow, only to find Molly standing in the entry way, staring at the two of them, her own hand clutching her face and her eyes filled with tears.  It would have been easier for Hermione if Ron's mum had decided to get stroppy with her over her anger and bad language and what had been – now she thought about it – a less-than-diplomatic reference to the way poor Fred had been killed.

The sob managed to half-force itself past her clamping hand, resulting in a kind of snort.  The sound was so far beyond pathetic that Hermione detested herself just as much as she detested her current lot in life.  She managed to swerve past the shell-shocked Molly and make it to the front door without anyone trying to stop her.

In the front garden, she careered down the path, needing to get far enough from the house to Apparate.  If she splinched herself in her current state then so be it.  Maybe she could do it fatally.  That would be a neat and tidy solution to all her failures.

Hand still clamped, sobs still threatening, eyes fixed on the ground and feet stumbling, Hermione didn't realise that she was about to run headlong into Arthur Weasley until something grabbed her upper arms and swung her to a stop.  She startled and looked up.  Arthur had dropped his Muggle-style briefcase in order to catch her safely, and his eyes were filled with concern.

"Hermione?  Whatever's the matter, love?" he said.

Ninety-bloody-four or not, Hermione spent two more seconds doing her impression of a deer in headlights before everything crumpled, and she began to cry harder than she'd cried in her life.

~~~

At the bottom of the back garden, near the broken-down fence that was held together by brambles and knotweed, there was a little wooden bench angled to look back towards the Burrow through a gap in the boxwood hedges that formed the boundary of Molly's herb and potions patch.

Hermione sat on that bench, Arthur Weasley beside her.  She was limp and listless now she had cried herself out.  Though she was hardly a stranger to fatigue, the tiredness she felt was somehow different to the exhaustion she'd been feeling since the battle.

Every couple of minutes a face would appear closer to the house, either on the pathway beyond the herb garden or at the first floor window above the kitchen which, if she remembered the eccentric geography of the house correctly, was currently serving as Charlie's room.  The face might belong to Ron or to Molly; both of them were periodically checking up on her.

She sighed, slumped on the bench, twisted round so that her folded arms rested on top of the bench's back and could pillow her chin.  Arthur, at the other end of the bench, had been quietly attentive company throughout all the tears and her broken attempts at explanation.  She'd told him about her parents, and about the horror she felt at returning to Hogwarts, but not about the Ron and Harry stuff.  There were things you couldn't confide in your boyfriend's dad, no matter how gentle and understanding a human being he might be.

Arthur finally stirred when a couple of minutes free from sobs had passed.

"Right then," he said.  "Seems we have two separate issues here."

She snorted into her arms.

"Can't help you with the schooling thing.  You'll have to talk to Minerva about that.  I'd encourage you to do so, though – sooner rather than later.  Your concerns are valid, and your situation is rather unique.  There ought to be some solution."

Hermione frowned against her arms.  She should have thought of that herself.  Blame the tiredness, maybe.

"But," Arthur went on, "when it comes to your parents, I can offer you the perspective you don't yet have – that of another parent."

She sighed again.  She didn't need Arthur to tell her why her parents had lost the ability to love her unconditionally.

"The biggest problem you have there?  Well, it isn't your sense of failure.  It's theirs."

She frowned again.  "Mmph?"

"Parents," Arthur said, seemingly unconcerned with the way she had decided to hide her face from him, "first meet their children when they are tiny, fragile, utterly vulnerable creatures.  Messy and damp, and occasionally rather smelly," he added, coaxing a grunt of humour out of her, "but for all that, the most wonderful and miraculous little human beings.  And they need us to take care of them.  Frankly, Hermione, babies are useless.  They can't do a thing for themselves.  Food and drink, personal hygiene, basic health and safety?  Useless."

He tut-tutted, feigning exasperation.  His desire to cheer her up was such a comforting 'dad' type thing to do, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to smile or cry some more.  She tried a smile, though.  Mainly because the tiredness was all-consuming and crying would require more effort.

"So these useless, vulnerable, needy little things that we, as parents, are already hopelessly in love with, provoke in us a powerful need to protect.  Just as well, really.  Most babies and toddlers seem to have a death-wish.  Anyway.  The babies grow up, and they start taking care of themselves, and one day as a parent you realise that the tiny thing that relied on you completely is now twenty-three and furious with you because you've hidden your car keys."

She snorted again, lulled by the gentle sound of Arthur's voice.

"Only – this is the important thing – it never goes away: that need to protect.  That knowledge that you would cheerfully throw yourself in front of a herd of stampeding centaurs just so long as doing so saved your tiny, miraculous, wonderful baby."  He sniffed.  "Even if your baby _is_ now taller than you are."

There was a pause.

"So...?" Hermione prompted, her voice muffled by the skin of her arms.

"So when your mum and dad woke up to their real memories, _that's_ what their parent-brains told them.  Not 'our daughter betrayed us'.  Not 'our daughter is more powerful than we can ever understand'.  Their first thought, the one that was stronger than _any_ other, would have been – 'we couldn't keep our baby safe'."

She lifted her head from her arms and shook it at Arthur.  "How _could_ they have kept me safe?  In those circumstances–"

"Doesn't matter," Arthur said simply.  "Circumstances, context, harsh realities?  None of it matters.  They are your parents, and you are their baby, and they were not able to keep you safe from harm.  However they express this, however they dress it up with other feelings?  It's their failure that hurts them the most."

"Well that's just silly," Hermione said.

"Why would you expect otherwise?  Emotional reactions aren't usually rooted in logic."

"Hmm."

"The point is, Hermione, _you_ were the only one who could keep your family safe.  And you did so.  Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I suppose," she conceded.

"But your poor old mum and dad – they'll only see _their_ failure.  They couldn't keep you safe, so you had to step in.  And you were forced to make a terrible, necessary choice.  One which caused you pain."  Arthur cocked his head to one side as he followed his own thoughts through to their conclusion.  "Which means that as well as their sense of failure, they'll be feeling guilty.  Dear oh dear.  That's going to make the whole thing even more awkward, I'm afraid.  Guilt can be such a minefield."

"How can you be sure of this?" Hermione asked.  "People are different.  They react in different ways."

"Course they do," he agreed.  "But parents?  We have certain touchstones.  You'll understand, one day.  Hopefully, anyway.  But I'm probably the closest thing you have to an extra dad while your parents are so far away.  And if _I_ can feel this sense of abject failure because of everything you and Ron and Harry have been through, everything that Molly and I couldn't shield you from, then Merlin only knows how your own flesh and blood are feeling."

She smiled at Arthur for that, because tucked away in there was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her.  "So how do I fix it?" she asked.

"Sorry, love," he said.  "You can't.  I mean, you can tell your mum and dad all the reasons why they shouldn't feel bad.  Isn't their fault You-Know-Who rose at just the wrong time.  Isn't their fault they happen to be Muggles who produced a powerful witch for a daughter."  He glanced around furtively and then went on in a lowered tone of voice, "Isn't their fault the Ministry of Magic has been run by idiots for years on end."  Then he sighed.  "None of it's their fault."

"Well isn't all that relevant?"

"Logically?  Yes.  Emotionally?"  He shook his head.  " _They're_ the parents, _you're_ their baby, and they couldn't protect you."  Arthur shrugged.  "The only thing that'll help is time.  Enough to get past the guilt.  Let some common sense seep in to the mix."

"Okay."

The afternoon was turning to evening.  Arthur stretched and looked up at the sky as it burnished the beautiful Devon countryside to a golden lustre.  "Now then," he said.  "Looking at the hollows around your eyes, you need to get some sleep.  Proper sleep.  And since we've got rather a houseful at the moment and I suspect a bunk in Ginny's room isn't the most attractive option for you, that means you need to go home.  Will you allow me to offer a Side-Along?  Not sure you're in any fit state to Apparate."

"That's probably sensible," Hermione agreed.  "But I should speak to Ron first.  I sort of blew up in his face, before."

"Right then," Arthur said.  "Let's go and find some tea.  And biscuits.  And you can have a chat with Ron, and then you can come and find me when you're ready."

~~~

"It wasn't like that," Ron said twenty minutes later, sitting on the floor of his bedroom with his legs stretched out in front of him and his head resting against the side of his bed.  "It wasn't like – 'Excellent!  Hermione isn't here so let's sort things out without her nagging at us!'"

"So how was it?" she asked.  She sat cross-legged on his bed and cradled the hot chocolate that Molly had decided would do her more good than the tea Arthur had suggested.

"Okay, well, actually we were talking about the Malfoys," Ron said.  "First evening you were gone, I think it was.  Me and Harry, we were trying to work out whether Lucius deserved some credit for bringing Snape in."  He snorted to himself.  "I mean, _Snape_!  Seriously – how arse-over-tit is that?  Save that wanker's life and you're supposed to get a round of applause?"  Ron tut-tutted.  "Course, Harry seemed to think that he did.  Deserve credit, I mean.  So I pointed out that Lucius Malfoy only ever looks after number one.  And since his big bad villainous mate had been well and truly sorted out, Malfoy was kind of on his own.  In a bit of an awkward position.  You know.  Having sided with a bunch of evil racist twats."

"Fair point," Hermione agreed.

"So _I_ said that Malfoy probably saved Snape – once he realised Snape had been playing both sides–"

"Not exactly true," she interrupted.  "I think it was more that he was pretending to play one side in order to help the other."

"Bloody impressive pretending, given the number of people who were hurt and killed in the process," Ron scoffed.  "But however you want to put it, Malfoy saw Snape might be of value, once people understood the part he played in bringing Voldemort down–"

"Ah, so you do acknowledge he played a part?"

"Course.  Doesn't mean I have to start fawning over him like Harry.  Bloke's still a vicious piece of shit.  Can I finish this point?"

"Sorry."

"Malfoy saved Snape to get himself some leverage – that's what I reckon.  He's playing it like, 'Oh, poor me, forced into service by a nasty dark wizard because of the threat to my beloved family, and thank goodness it's all over now.  And even though it would be safer for me to join my wife and son in hiding in France, I'm a better man than that.  See, people, how I chose to come back here and place myself at the mercy of the Aurors just to save my heroic and dear friend Severus!'"

"Hmm.  Well, it is a fact that he'd be better off in France," Hermione said.

"No it isn't.  Not for Malfoy.  He won't want to be alive and free and living a quiet, powerless life of zero wealth and influence.  He'd rather risk it all just to get back a fraction of what he had."

"Okay, that's probably true.  Still, it _is_ a fact that Snape would be dead without his intervention."

"And that's a bad thing?"

Hermione felt a lurch in her gut.  "Yes.  Alive is better than dead."

"Maybe.  Sometimes.  Not always."  Ron frowned at her, perhaps because of the rising anger in her eyes.  "No, I'm not talking about whether _I'd_ like it better if he was dead.  What _I_ think – that doesn't matter.  The only opinion that matters is the one the greasy git himself has.  Better alive than dead?  I dunno.  Is he even grateful that Malfoy saved him, d'you reckon?"

"No idea."

"Maybe someone should ask him."

"Okay.  Hang on.  We've got off-topic.  You were telling me why you and Harry decided not to go back to school only once I was out of the picture."

"I'm getting to that.  So we were discussing Malfoy, which led round to Draco, and we wondered if he'd be allowed back to do his NEWTs when whatever happened with his dad was sorted.  'Cause Draco didn't exactly come through the war with squeaky clean hands, did he?"

"Not really.  But if Lucius Malfoy's claims of threats and coercion are tenuous at best, I think Draco could make a much better case for being young and vulnerable and influenced by the people closest to him."

Ron nodded reluctant agreement.  "So anyway, once we talked about Draco coming back to school, the conversation was just, you know, happening.  It was too late to stop it.  And I told Harry that I dreaded going back – for all the reasons you pointed out earlier, by the way – and he said the same, and that the offer Shacklebolt had made about getting us into Auror training stood, and before we knew it we'd figured out that it was the best option."

"I see."

There was a pause.  Hermione let her tired eyes roam lazily around the room, taking in Quidditch posters and discarded sweet wrappings.  If Ron had decided he was no longer child-like enough to go back to school, how the hell could she do it herself?

"Look – we felt bad," Ron said after a while.  "Soon as we realised it was a conversation we should have had with you there, we felt bad.  But it was done, then."

She shook her head.  "Me being there wouldn't have changed the way you feel."

"Maybe.  But we didn't mean to shut you out."  Showing more maturity and sensitivity than she might have expected, Ron added, "I know that's a thing.  With you.  Being left out of stuff.  I just want you to know that me and Harry – we'd never do that on purpose."

"I appreciate that."

Ron's head flopped right back on the mattress and he looked up at the ceiling.  There was a long pause.

"Bet you could pass your NEWTs right now, if you had the chance to sit them," he said.

Hermione shrugged.  "Charms, Arithmancy, DADA, Transformation – probably.  Not as well as I could pass them with some proper study and revision."

"Not Potions?"

"Potions is about more than the theory.  There's a dozen final year potions I've never had the chance to brew."

"Oh."  Another pause.  "If you do go back, you know I'd wait for you.  It wouldn't be – I mean, I'd be a bit of a lowlife to just..."  His words trailed off and he sighed.

"It's okay," she told him.  Her heartbeat was getting louder in her ears.

"But that's just it, isn't it?" Ron said cryptically.  "Maybe it shouldn't be okay.  Maybe we should be more bothered about all this.  Like Ginny and Harry."

"Maybe."

The silence this time was long and potent and gravid with a sense of separation: the barrier between what had gone before and what was to come.

Hermione waited.

"I love you," Ron finally said.

"I know.  I love you too."

"But this isn't going to work, is it?"

Hermione waited for the gut-wrenching sense of disappointment.  The heartbreak.  The sense of loss.  All she felt was relief, that she hadn't needed to be the one to say it.

"I've started to have my suspicions," she hedged.

Ron gave a tired, sad laugh.  "Come on, 'Mione.  You're the brains of the operation, after all."

"Oh, bollocks to that," she said.  "I'm good at some stuff.  You're good at other stuff.  Harry's got his own talents, thank goodness, since we'd probably all be dead or in thrall to a dark wizard right now if he didn't."

"All true."  Ron's head nodded thoughtfully against his bedclothes.  "I think," he said, "we were better at being friends than lovers."

"We never stopped being friends.  Hopefully we never, ever will."

"But the other stuff made things complicated.  It was...I dunno, _risky_.  It's easier to fuck things up when there's all the other stuff to consider.  Sex stuff."

Hermione smiled.  "You know, sounds to me like _you're_ the brains of the operation."

"No, I mean – I just got to thinking  You know?  What you said, before you left," Ron told her.

"What did I say?"

"That you weren't so selfish as to want me to go with you."

"Oh.  That  What about it?"

"So – _I_ was that selfish.  I'd have expected you to drop everything and come with me, if I'd been in your position.  I s'pose, well...I s'pose it made me realise that things weren't equal.  Not between us, not as lovers.  And I figured that if you hadn't noticed things weren't equal then it was only a matter of time before you did.  Notice, I mean.  And then you'd get resentful and probably dump me.  But then again – if you _had_ noticed, and you'd just accepted it already, well, I got to thinking that I must be some kind of a bastard.  Because you'd already resigned yourself to being the generous one in our relationship.  And that made me the demanding, self-absorbed one."

"Okay, hold on a second – when the hell did you get so emotionally insightful?" Hermione demanded.

"Dunno."  Ron paused for a moment, then he added, "No, I do.  I do know.  It was when I thought I'd let you and Harry down, back with the Horcruxes.  And maybe when I saw my big brother die, and I realised how easy it is that all the things you take for granted can get yanked away from you in the space of a heartbeat."

"Ah."

"It isn't insight, though," Ron said.  "It's more like basic strategy.  I want you in my life.  Always.  And even if I really, really like having sex with you, that's less important to me than knowing you and I will always be friends."

She nodded.  "For the record?  The woman you end up marrying had better be spectacularly wonderful.  Because she's getting a hell of a bloke."

He laughed an embarrassed laugh at that.  "Likewise," Ron said.

"Well, I'm not averse to some experimentation, but to be honest with you, I've yet to find the woman that makes me go 'yummy!'"

He spluttered.  "Oh, I meant–"

"I know what you meant, plonker."

He turned around, tips of his ears still crimson, and he tried a smile.  "Friends, then?"

"Always, and always, and forever."

Her hot chocolate had grown lukewarm.  She finished it off and bid Ron a goodbye.  It was time to go home.  A bath, an early night, and if she was really lucky, a proper night's sleep.

In the morning she would owl Professor McGonagall.  And, thinking about her former teachers, it was probably about time she thought about visiting Severus Snape.

~~~


	4. In the White Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'I'm just a soul whose intentions are good,  
>  Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."
> 
> Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Sol Marco  
>  'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' 1964

The room was white.

This was not so surprising, considering it was in a hospital.  Most hospitals, Muggle or otherwise, tended towards pale smooth surfaces that could be readily cleansed.

There was no window.

Hermione knew the layout of St. Mungo's by now, and hadn't been expecting a window in one of the private recuperation rooms on this side of the corridor.  It did make her wonder why Snape had been tucked away in here, though.  Perhaps the Healers hadn't wanted his presence disturbing and distracting all the people still recovering in the busy ward at the north end of the building.  Or perhaps Shacklebolt had insisted on this room, since it had no entrance or egress except for the one door which was constantly guarded by an Auror out in the main first floor corridor.  That seemed more likely.  She wondered whether he was more concerned about keeping something in, or keeping other things out.

Maybe both.

The floating globe near the ceiling cast a uniform glow that tended to the blue end of the light spectrum.  The globes could be magically adjusted, Hermione knew, and most people preferred the glow to have a hint of orange because it was reminiscent of the candlelight so ubiquitous in the Wizarding world.  Those hues were warming.  Kinder, somehow.  More forgiving.

Not here.  Blue light, white walls: if the light started to flicker then the room would become alarmingly reminiscent of a midnight-at-the-mortuary scene in a horror movie...

The sheets on the narrow wrought-iron bed in the corner were crisp and bleached and tucked ruthlessly straight, not a wrinkle in sight: nothing that might form the tiniest of shadows and thus interrupt the whiteness.  The table beside the bed also stood on wrought-iron legs, and was similarly painted – or perhaps charmed – white all over.

A glass carafe filled with water and an accompanying tumbler stood on the table, both clear and polished and reflecting – of course – only the whiteness.

A shelf under the table held two books atop at least one issue of the Daily Prophet, the reading material half-hidden away as if the books themselves were self-conscious about their solid, darker colours.

All of this would have been fine, if a little on the clinical side, were it not for one thing:

Severus Snape wore white robes.

Snape, Hermione considered, should never, _ever_ wear white.  Not even a hospital-issue medical gown.  It just looked wildly, utterly, head-fuck-ingly wrong.  Like he had become the ghost of Snape.

A stray thought flickered through her mind, and that thought was furious that St. Mungo's hadn't had the basic decency to anticipate this wrongness and arrange for a special black medical gown to be produced for Snape.  This was Wizarding Britain, was it not?  A couple of charms could easily take the utilitarian whiteness of this horrible, un-Snape-like, _wrong_ thing he was wearing and turn it into something that didn't jolt people's brains and make them wonder whether they'd stepped through some kind of looking glass.

Thank goodness for the blackness of his hair.  With the white room and the white gown and the bloodless skin of his face and hands, Hermione wondered whether she would even have been able to pinpoint his location, were it not for the outline his hair provided.  That and the raw red of the skin that peeked out each side of the bandages still in place around his neck.  Black and red: a floating head and neck amid the white-white-white.  Like a Snape-balloon.  Everyone's favourite Hallowe'en gift...

These notions made her want to laugh.  But it was mainly because she was nervous, and she wasn't quite sure why, and that made her more nervous still.

He was seated in the opposite corner from the bed, his back to that particular fixture as if he was doing his best to ignore it.  A low table was placed before the chair in which he sat.  He did not stand as Hermione came through the doorway, though she had not expected him to; his Healer had explained that as his body recovered from the corrosive trauma of Nagini's venom, Snape's mobility was limited.  His nervous system was still regenerating, which was both painful and frustrating because it affected the entirety of his motor function.

She stared at him.  She knew she was staring.  But seriously, what the hell else was she expected to do in circumstances such as these?  Since he hadn't even raised his head from the large book that lay across his lap, hadn't so much as acknowledged the door opening, she felt she had the right to take a few moments.  Take it all in.

Was he smaller than she remembered?  It was the weirdest thing, but he seemed smaller.  Surely even a year's worth of time and stress and horrific injuries didn't actually _shrink_ people?  Or was it her perspective that had shifted in the year she'd spent away from school?  Severus Snape had always been one of the giants of Hogwarts: a titan of Potions, a colossus of the Dark Arts and their defence.  A force of nature, even, with eyes burning black and robes rippling around his body as if he were halfway to becoming a Dementor in human form.

Now he just looked like a man who'd been through the mill in recent times and who was looking down both barrels of the big four-oh.

Her eyes swept down his form until they reached the sliver of ankle visible above the slippers St. Mungo's issued to those patients who didn't bring their own.  Bony ankles; white skin; a few dark hairs: she averted her gaze and found herself focusing on the ceiling instead.  Suddenly it felt like a safer place to look.

Hermione bit her lip and wondered why it was so startling to discover that Severus Snape had _ankles_ –

"Speak," said Severus Snape to his book.  "Or leave."

His voice was rough, as made sense for a man who had suffered a serious injury to his throat just over a month earlier.  But the resonance was still there in the background: that commanding, slightly sneering sonority.  The sound that could fill a hall and leave no occupant untouched by its vibrations.  The sound that had terrorised a thousand Hogwarts students over twenty years.

It was a sound that Hermione had, until quite recently, believed she would never hear again.  And that would have been just one of many losses thanks to the machinations of Voldemort and his bigoted cronies, but it would still have been a loss.  Its unexpected return was welcome...even if she knew that the owner of this voice cared little for her thoughts on the matter.

There came the sound of a heavy sigh.  "Miss Granger," Snape said without lifting his head, "you never before struck me as someone who needs to be told something twice."

Rather than add the demand that she refrain from making him revise this assessment, he raised his eyes from the book and left the rest of the statement implicit in his cold, unimpressed gaze.

Severus Snape was looking at her.

The last time that had happened, Hermione had thought she was watching him die in agony.

She realised she was still holding on to the door handle, and she closed the door quietly to behind her.  Then she swallowed hard, adjusted her posture by nudging her shoulders back and her chin a little higher.  She reminded herself that she was an adult woman now, by all society's standards, and Snape no longer had any authority over her.

"Forgive me for interrupting," she said, pleased with how steady her voice sounded.  "I wanted only to stop by and pay my respects."

Snape's left eyebrow twitched, as if it had considered arching in response and then decided against, perhaps because it had not yet recovered the muscle-control to pull it off.  He looked at her flatly for maybe three or four uncomfortable seconds.  Then he dropped his gaze back to his book.  His fingers, Hermione noted, clutched tightly to the pages, the tips swelling bloodless around each fingernail.  Snape's hands trembled with the effort, as if he were afraid the book might jump out of his lap.

"Pay your respects," he repeated in a murmur, the sound low in volume and yet still filling this sealed white box of a room.  "Contrary to popular demand, I am not yet dead."

She frowned in confusion before she took his point.  "Oh.  Yes, sorry, I suppose that was the wrong choice of words."  Why was she apologising?  He was the one who'd wilfully misunderstood her.  She gathered some courage and added, "Though _contrary_ to your rather cynical outlook, it is actually possible to offer respect to people who are still alive.  So that's what I'm doing."

He made her wait for a response, using the time instead to inhale and exhale with audible languor.  "Marvellous.  How much better my day seems already."

Hermione couldn't help but snort a laugh.  Snape's brow furrowed; perhaps this was not the response he'd expected.  "Sorry, Professor," she said.  "I'd forgotten how much of a talent you have for sarcasm."  She put her head to one side.  "Actually – not sorry.  Not for laughing; not even if I'm the butt of the joke."  She nodded to herself.  "Don't have to be sorry any more."

There was something liberating, Hermione thought, about the way she could now openly enjoy Severus Snape's dark, acerbic humour without running the risk of detention and loss of house points, or, indeed, of being shot wounded glares by Harry and Ron.

Snape's languorous breath was, this time, more of a sigh.  He looked up again from his book.  "I am no longer your Professor, Miss Granger.  Now don't let me keep you.  I'm sure there's something beyond that door just itching for you to take charge of it."

She didn't laugh at the sarcasm that time, since he'd upped the bite and the barb had landed.  However, rather than turn and flounce out in a huff, or even let her shoulders drop and walk away feeling dejected and abused, she shook her head slowly.

"I'm wanted as much out there as I am in here," she told him.  A hard truth to admit.

"Really," he said, his disinterest palpable.

"Mmm.  Of course, there was a time when I didn't let little things like being unwanted stop me.  But I had a lot more energy then."  She reached to the back of her neck and rubbed.  Snape frowned again and looked away.  "Yes, I know.  You couldn't stand me when I was your student, and nothing's changed.  So let me lay it all out for you, all I came to say, and then I'll get lost and you can go back to holding on tight to your book."

His head lowered further at that, and the hair fell to hide his eyes, and the gesture was suddenly so familiar that Hermione had a lump in her throat.

"Right then," she said.  "Number one –you have my respect.  I offer it because I need to, not because I'm stupid enough to think you want it.  But I'm sure it'll bounce right off you and you can kick it under that remarkably uncomfortable-looking bed in the corner there.  Seriously, where do they procure the fixtures and fittings for this place, Bedlam?"

Snape gave a tiny huff but didn't offer any clue as to whether he was amused or annoyed.

"Secondly – I'm sorry I left you in the shack.  Really, profoundly sorry.  I mean, I couldn't have done anything to help you, probably shouldn't have tried in any case, since we had, you know, kind of a lot on our plate.  But...I thought I'd watched you die.  I thought you were already gone when we left you in there.  Soon as I learned it wasn't like that?  I just – I'm sorry.  I wish I'd checked your pulse.  Talked to you.  Stayed for a bit."

"Why?" he demanded.

"What do you mean, why?"

"Besides disrupting the rescue efforts to which I _was_ subjected, what difference could your presence have possibly made?"

Hermione shrugged.  "Maybe none.  For you.  But if _I'd_ been bleeding to death on that floor, I think I'd have liked it if someone thought I mattered enough to sit next to me and keep me company.  Just until my heart stopped beating."

His dark eyes lifted again.  "There are worse things than dying alone."

"Mmm," she agreed casually.  "Like thinking you're dying with Bellatrix Lestrange.  That trumps 'alone', all ways up."

A moment of consideration between the two of them.  Perhaps even a moment of understanding.  Connection.

"Indeed," Snape finally acknowledged.  "Is there a 'thirdly' or can we consider this pep-talk thankfully over?"

She smirked.  "If you really want to insult me, Professor, you're going to have to ease off on the funny."  And before he could deny the title a second time she added, "Right, right, not my Professor any more.  But 'Mr. Snape' sounds weird, and you'd probably smack me upside the head if I went for 'Severus', so let's just go with 'Professor' for now.  Call it the lesser of three evils."

He did another tiny huff and looked away.

"Thirdly," she said, "you should talk to Harry."

"Should I now," he replied, with no questioning inflection at all.

"You should."

"I think I'd rather die in Bellatrix's company," Snape said with a grimace.

"Would you?  Well, she's a lot quieter these days," Hermione observed.  "Bit stinkier, too.  Less swift with that cursed blade of hers."

Snape shot her a piercing look.  "You were cut?"

"Hmm."

He nodded slowly, then looked away.  "Fotheringhay and Deane.  'Curses and their Counters.'  There's sometimes a copy in the second-hand bookshop at Diagon Alley, though don't try Flourish and Blotts.  They won't acknowledge its existence."

"It's...dark?" she asked hesitantly.

"Worse.  It's a self-published layman's text."

"Oh."  Hermione frowned.  "Why have I never heard of this book?"

"It was dismissed as ill-informed nonsense.  No hospital will admit to owning a copy."

"But you think it's worth recommending?"

He glanced up at her briefly.  "Apparently so."

"But why–"

"Miss Granger, I have offered you a potential line of enquiry.  Take it or do not, it matters less than little to me."

"Okay.  Well – thank you.  I'll look into it."  She glanced down at her own collar bone.  "I've got to do something about this.  Madame Pomfrey's healing charms clearly aren't working well enough.  I can't even wear a white shirt at the moment.  The damn thing keeps splitting open at the bottom."

Snape grunted, seemingly lost in his book again.  Hermione drew breath to get back on topic, but she was interrupted by the door behind her juddering in its frame.  She just had time to step to the side before it swung open.  A Mediwitch whose name she vaguely remembered as Constance stepped through, carrying a tray laden with tea things.

Constance smiled at her, clearly surprised to see her there, then set her tray down on the table next to Snape. "Afternoon, Mr. Snape," she said cheerfully.  "Brought you your tea."  Snape did not acknowledge the offering, nor its bearer.  Constance hesitated a moment, flustered by the absence of courtesy as Hermione was herself.  "Yes, well, enjoy!"

The Mediwitch turned back to the door.  As she moved past Hermione, she muttered, "Don't know why we bother.  He never drinks it."  The comment was loud enough for Snape to have heard, though he did not react.

The door closed behind Constance.  Hermione looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and turned back to the table.  She caught a glimpse of Snape examining the tea tray that, frankly, seemed quite inviting: pot gently steaming with pleasant fragrance, cup and saucer of fine china, a matching milk jug, and a sugar bowl that Hermione just knew, with complete certainty, that Snape would never use.

He looked away from the tray as if it didn't even exist, eyes again on his book.  Hermione wondered why on earth he refused to partake of so simple a pleasure.  Did he think it was poisoned?  Was it some kind of protest?  Or was it more like forfeiture?

Hard to say.  None of her business anyway.

"So anyway, here's why you should talk to Harry," she said, remembering the main reason for this visit.  "It's in your interests to be cordial with the bloke who's running round like a blue-arsed fly to make sure the Wizengamot doesn't shove you in Azkaban."  Snape didn't respond.  "Also, Harry's got a stubborn streak a mile wide.  He'll keep asking questions until you answer them.  So answer them.  Get them out the way and he'll shut up."

"Mr. Potter's memories of his parents, such as they are, will not be improved by my input," Snape said dismissively.

"That's Harry's look-out for asking."  She thought about the tremble in Harry's lower lip when he'd told her and Ron about the incident with the Marauders by the lake.  It was always hard to see the flaws in your parents.  Worse, for Harry, since his loss had built them both up in his imagination to be heroic, almost seraphic.  She shook the memory away and sought to offer Snape the only reassurance on this matter that she could.  "And for the record, he's already worked out that his dad and Sirius were nasty little louts at school."

"Indeed."  There was a pause for a moment, before he looked up, eyes dark and angry.  "Well, Miss Granger, I appreciate you taking the time to prove me right."

She tried to work out what that meant.  "I don't–"

"I shall not be speaking to Potter at any point in the future.  While the memories he was...kind enough to return to me were hardly experiences I cling to fondly, I have become quite aware that they are only safe when they are in my head."

She frowned and shook her head.  "But–"

"You should leave now."  His voice had a dangerous tremor in it, new and threatening.  He looked away from her.  "My patience runs short."

Hermione closed her mouth on the questions and protests that she wanted to voice, recognising that this window of communication had been firmly shuttered.  She breathed deep, confused about how she'd managed to screw this meeting up after it had seemed to be going so much better than she'd anticipated.

"Goodbye Professor," she said, thinking that this was probably to be their last ever meeting.  "I hope your recovery goes well.  I'm sorry I didn't get to learn more from you.  You were scary as hell, but you could be awe-inspiring in the classroom."

She turned and left the room, her duty done.

~~~

"But why would he say that?" Harry protested later, after being filled in on as much of the detail of Hermione's meeting with Snape as she was comfortable sharing.

"Which bit?"

"I mean, what was it you said that proved him right?  About not wanting to talk to me."

"Oh, right.  Yes, I wondered about that."

They were sitting together in the drawing room, one on each of the faded and worn sofas that faced each other beside the fireplace.  The room was clean and welcoming now, its shabbiness more a part of its charm than a turn-off.  Between the sofas, on the floor, was a large tray Hermione had brought up from the lower ground floor kitchen, with a cafetiere of decent coffee and a plate of ginger biscuits: Muggle food and drink for the two Muggle-raised occupants of this magical house.

"So?" Harry prompted, when Hermione's words had tailed off and she'd lost herself, for a while, in memories of the afternoon's visit to St. Mungo's.

"Sorry.  Yes.  So I was in Diagon Alley after I left the hospital.  I was looking for a book."

"Of course you were," Harry quipped.

She rolled her eyes.  "Didn't find it.  But I walked past the Daily Prophet's offices while I was there. "

Harry pretended to hawk and spit.  Fortunately he was too well-mannered to do it for real.

"Well, quite," Hermione agreed.  "Anyway, you know in their window they have that display with the week's front pages?"

"Yeah."

"So I made the mistake of glancing at that."

"I avoid the Prophet like the plague," Harry said.

"I do usually, as well.  But like I said, I glanced.  And I saw this headline."  She rummaged in her bag, tucked down at the side of the sofa, and pulled out the back edition of the Wizarding tabloid that she'd purchased from Flourish and Blotts.

The front page of the paper held a prominent image of Snape.  In this image he was at his most hook-nosed and lank-haired, his shoulders hunching and his top lip sneering in a short jerky cycle, all while his eyes darted around suspiciously.  He looked like he was taking a breather from his hectic schedule of tying young women to railway tracks and cackling maniacally.  It was, needless to say, not a flattering picture.

Above the picture, the legend: _'SEVERUS SNAPE AND HIS DOOMED CHILDHOOD ROMANCE!'_

Further down the article was a smaller moving picture, this one of Lily Potter, newly married, beautiful and beaming through what was probably the earliest stage of her pregnancy with Harry.  The Daily Prophet had, it seemed, carefully chosen images which demonstrated how far out of Snape's league most would consider the radiant Lily to be.

Hermione turned it around, too sickened to study the thing more closely, and showed her friend.  Harry's face went white.  He leaned forward and snatched the paper out of her hand, and he began to scan the text.

"What the fuck?" he demanded, presumably to the world in general because Hermione certainly had no answer.

"Yup," she said, agreeing with all he hadn't said.

"Three days ago," he went on, presumably after glancing at the paper's date.

"Yup."

"Wondered why Shacklebolt's been in such a foul mood, the last couple of days."

"Ah.  This would explain it," Hermione said.

"How the hell did they get hold of this?"

She sighed and slumped back on the threadbare sofa.  "I don't know.  But, thinking about it, it isn't so surprising."

"Yes it is!  This was not common knowledge!  I mean, _I_ knew about it.  And Shacklebolt knew, because I had to show him the memories for evidence before I returned them to Snape."

"Why was that?"

"Because there's rules!  Legal rules.  When it turned out Snape had survived, we had to return his memories because it's a crime to keep them away from someone unless they formally renounce them.  So that means that my memories of seeing Snape's memories are the things now presented in evidence.  If you follow me."

"I'm with you."

"But when it's second-hand like that, the evidence you submit – memories of memories – you need two sources.  It's to counter the chances of them being faked.  So Shacklebolt had to see the memories too.  Then we gave them back to Snape, and our memories of them were placed in the Wizengamot's Pensieve.  And that's locked away.  Secure.  You need high level clearance to access the thing."

"Okay.  But that still means _some_ people have access.  It's available to anyone in Magical Law Enforcement who has clearance.  And to anyone in the Wizengamot who has been presented with the evidence."

"Well, yeah, but...these are serious people, Hermione.  Not gossips.  No more than you and me."

"No doubt.  But think about it.  Think about all the wives and husbands, lovers, friends, family, all the people those in the know might just have told.  All in complete confidence, of course, because the information is legally classified...except people like to talk.  Sometimes they need to unload, at the end of a day.  Or they like to feel important.  And then there's all the people that the husbands and wives might have talked to.  Things get out, and secrets are told, and before you know it someone less trustworthy has worked out that telling the Prophet about what they've heard is likely to earn them a pretty penny."

There was quiet for a while.  Harry sighed.  "You're right.  It shouldn't be surprising, this happening.  When you put it like that."

"It's still depressing.  Much nicer to think that people are respectful.  Especially when it comes to the man who is as directly responsible for the defeat of Voldemort as you are."  She tut-tutted.  "But the world doesn't work like that."

"Hmm."  Harry shuffled at the end of his sofa, tossing the paper away in disgust.  "But he's not an idiot, Snape, is he?  All that you just said – he knows that too.  He must realise it isn't _my_ fault this has happened."

"Why would he care whose fault it is?  It happened.  He's been humiliated, all over again."  Hermione took up her mug of coffee and sipped.  "I think it's likely that when he gave you those memories back in the shack he didn't reckon on being around to experience the aftermath."

Harry nodded sadly.  "He thought he was dying.  It was his last chance to make me understand."  He frowned at the fireplace.  "He didn't do it for me.  Not even for my mum.  He did it because the only thing he cared about was defeating Voldemort."

"There are worse things to have a monomania about than that," Hermione pointed out.

"S'pose."

"Point is, it doesn't matter that you weren't the one who owl-ed the Prophet with the juicy details.  Snape's secrets are out, and they're out specifically because he opened up to someone."

"So now he knows not to do it any more," Harry concluded glumly.  "And he won't talk to me."

"Ohh, I think he learned to keep secrets a long time ago.  And I think he's got plenty of other reasons for not wanting to talk to you.  This one – it just reinforces his point of view."

"Why would you say that?" Harry complained.  "I'm trustworthy, aren't I?"

"Of course you are," she said.  "But you're also Harry Potter.  You're proof positive that your mum and dad met, and fell in love, and started a family.  You have your mother's eyes.  You're a Gryffindor, like the Marauders.  Do you really imagine that when Snape looks at you, he isn't being visited by a dozen ghosts?  All those losses and mistakes and ancient hurts?"

"I can't help who I am!" Harry cried.

"And Snape can't help who he is," she insisted, as gently as she could.  "He can't just excise those parts of himself that feel pain whenever they look at you, Harry.  And frankly – why should he even have to try?"

Harry was quiet at that, and for quite some time.  They drank their coffee and nibbled their biscuits, as the summer evening beyond the window grew darker.

"You're right," he finally conceded.  "Of course you are.  I mean, you're Hermione Granger, and you're always bloody right."

"Not always."  She tried to adopt a stern face.  "Though I am, of course, never, ever wrong."

He snorted at the weak joke.  "I know I get kind of caught up in what I want.  What I think I need.  Sometimes I forget to consider what other people might need, as well."

She hid a smile.  But there it was: cold, hard evidence that her best friends were all growing up.  And she'd always believed that Harry, after those awful years he'd endured with the Dursleys, had probably earned the right to a bit of a selfish streak, anyway.

There was another companionable silence.

"Are you and Ron really over?" Harry asked after a while.

Hermione smiled sadly at her coffee mug.  She'd been waiting for this particular conversation.  Harry had been frantic to ask the question for the three days since she'd come back from the Burrow: she knew him well enough to recognise him in _'I'm desperate to know but I'm trying to be supportive and to give you some space'_ mode.  She was impressed with the patience and consideration he had shown.

"Ron and I will never be over," she told him firmly.  "No more than you and I will be.  Friends forever."

"But–"

"I know what you're asking.  And yes.  The sweaty, sticky stuff won't be happening any more."

Harry went crimson and almost spilled his coffee.  "Hermione!"

She giggled.  "What do you want me to call it?  The rumpy-pumpy?  The beast with two backs?  The in-out-in-out-shake-it-all-about?"

"You are trying to embarrass me now."

"It's just far too easy."  She grinned, and waited for the colour in Harry's cheeks to fade a little.  "We both came to the same conclusion.  We're better as friends than lovers."

"I see," Harry said, but looked like he wasn't convinced.

"Honestly – cheer up!  Both of us, we're fine with this.  It's the right decision," she said.  "We both knew why things happened between us like they did.  Me and Ron, we've always been insecure."

"Insecure?"  Harry looked flabbergasted.  "Why?  Ron's tall and plays Quidditch and-and-and you're the brightest witch of our age."

"Ron's the youngest son in a large family, and has always struggled to believe he's important in his own right.  I've been an outsider most of my life.  I had friends at Hogwarts only because you and Ron decided I was worth the effort.  Most people still think I'm a boring, bossy know-it-all."

"Oh, come on–"

"It's okay!"  She grinned at him to show it really was, as well.  "Ron's finding his confidence now, and that's great.  And I got comfortable with myself far earlier in my youth than most teenagers manage.  We both focused on each other at school when those adolescent hormones began to kick in because of two things: we're very fond of each other, and we're terrified by the idea of being rejected by other people – people we can't be quite so sure have our best interests at heart."

"Oh."  Harry looked unhappy.  Then he perked up.  "What about Krum?  You made Ron jealous with him."

"I was as astonished as anyone when Victor asked me to the ball.  And it was a very nice evening.  But I didn't do it to make Ron jealous, and if he was jealous, it was only because somewhere in the back of his head he'd already decided what I'd decided as well – we were each other's safe bets."

"Okay, well, what about Padma?  He was confident enough to ask her out!"

"No he wasn't, Harry, you asked both the twins out for you and Ron."

"Oh.  Right.  Well, what about Lavender Brown?"

"Lavender vamped him.  And he wanted to get my attention.  It was all very stupid and meaningless."

Harry waved his hands through the air, as if clearing all the vague memories of more innocent times away.  "Well, I'm sorry it worked out like that for you both.  Mainly because I really liked the idea of you and Ron being my brother and sister in law."

Hermione's eyes widened.  "Oh my god, you _proposed_?"

"What?  Oh, of course not.  Ginny hasn't even finished school, and Molly would kill me.  I just mean, you know, at some point in the future."

"Right.  Well, looks like Ron'll be your brother-in-law anyway, then.  And if you really don't already think of me as a sister in all but name then, frankly, I'm disappointed."

He grinned at that and reached across to the other sofa.  They held hands briefly.

"So I don't have to lay in to Ron for breaking your heart?" Harry asked when they'd settled back again

"Oh good grief, no."

"Or give you a lecture about breaking Ron's?"

"Quite unnecessary."

Harry gave her a lopsided smiled.  "Course, your biggest problem is that I'm not sure the world has managed to produce a man who'd do you justice.  And any contender is going to go through some serious vetting from me and Ron to make sure they're good enough.  That'll end up scaring most of your 'possibles' away."

"Lovely.  I shall get me to a nunnery."

There was a pause, as they both considered how Hermione might look in nun's robe and habit, before they snorted into giggles.  There were, she decided, definitely worse things in the world than being housemates with your best friend.

The stray thought then struck her that, if Harry and Ron were set on scaring off all her possible suitors, then what she _really_ needed was a suitor who was scarier than Harry and Ron put together...

~~~


	5. Castles in the Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "...the end of all our exploring  
>  Will be to arrive where we started  
>  And know the place for the first time."
> 
> T. S. Eliot  
>  'Little Gidding' 1942

Early June in the Scottish Highlands.  The midges were as busy as ever.  Hermione remembered the handy insect-repellent charm that she'd learned during her first spring up here, so many years ago.  She cast it voiceless and wandless as she walked.  It was nice to remind herself of the things she could still do.

The towering spires of Hogwarts gradually emerged from the folds and slopes of the landscape as Hermione walked up the familiar road from Hogsmeade.  She'd Floo-ed up to the Three Broomsticks, because this was the first time she'd returned to Hogwarts since the battle; she wasn't entirely convinced she could rely on her three D's for Apparition.

The school itself remained inaccessible via the Floo Network while it underwent its extensive magical repairs, but Hermione didn't mind the short walk.  It was nice to get out of the city.  And this way she could claim a bit of privacy to experience whatever she was going to experience on her return to the school.  Landing right in the middle of the place, perhaps in Professor McGonagall's office, would have given her no such 'easing in' time.  She wanted to know how she felt before she had to risk an audience.  It was how she did things.

This was, in fact, a promise she'd made to herself years before the revelation of magic and Hogwarts: if things got fraught then she was damn well going to work through them on her own.  Even at the age of seven she'd hated it when people saw her cry.

The track turned a corner, and the sloping hillside that had blocked her view of most of the school no longer stood in her way.  Hermione paused, examining the castle at this first decent vantage point.

Her breathing was steady.  She wasn't shaking.

She was proud of herself.

And just as Severus Snape had not seemed quite so imposing during her recent visit to St. Mungo's, Hermione realised that Hogwarts itself had lost some of its heart-stopping grandeur.  It wasn't just the two towers that had suffered structural damage, nor the crumbled battlements, nor the soot-blackened patches of stonework.  It wasn't the hole that gaped where once the old wooden bridge had linked the Clock Tower to the Sundial Garden.

It wasn't anything to do with the damage.  It was something else, something less definable.  It was _her_ : Hermione Granger.  She had the strongest suspicion that she had outgrown much of what Hogwarts stood for.

Gryffindor Tower, she noted without any sense of pride or relief, remained relatively unscathed.  The rooms within that tower had been her home-from-home for six years.

Not any more.

She started walking again, more briskly because she was convinced, now, of her emotional equilibrium.  Not that she was getting over-confident, of course.  She still anticipated sights within the school's confines that would have the power to shake her up: a crumbled wall on the seventh floor near the Room of Requirement; the scorch marks left by Fiendfyre; a twisted and tortured Whomping Willow marking a secret passage to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade from which she had, very deliberately, averted her gaze as she'd passed through the town...

She shook such memories away.  Time enough to deal with their fall-out when she was faced with it directly.

More quickly than she anticipated, she found herself at the gates to the school.  They were firmly closed to, presumably because the school was effectively a building site at the moment.  Maybe there'd been an issue with tourists and sightseers.  She could well imagine morbid souvenir collectors who wanted to brag about keeping on their mantelpiece a piece of rubble gouged from the fabric of the school by Death Eater curse.

Up among the turrets and the battlements, insect-sized broomstick fliers in the distance.  Large pieces of stone and slate and wood were being levitated into position in various places.  Through holes in the walls, Hermione could see the architects who were running each repair project.  And there was the Astronomy Tower, where Harry had been forced to witness the death of Professor Dumbledore, and perhaps more awful still, Severus Snape had been forced to make it happen.  One of its turrets was being levitated almost intact through the air.  Its spire floated upwards, having been reassembled on the ground.  The clear blue sky between tower and spire made it look, disconcertingly, like a decapitation.

Hermione stood for a while, deep in thought.  She'd loved this castle, loved the school, loved everything about being a student here.  Her hunger for learning had nestled happily alongside the recognition that those things that had always set her apart from the other children at Muggle primary school were no longer a problem for her.  Hogwarts was where she'd belonged.  The world of magic was _her_ world.

Even the isolation of those earliest first-year days hadn't damaged her belief in Hogwarts.  Every skirmish, every adventure, every near-death-experience she'd had within these grounds had failed to knock her faith.  This place was beautiful, and ancient, and so redolent with learning and power and nurturing...

And this place...this place was _toxic_.

The thought had come to her so suddenly and unexpectedly that it made her gasp.  For a moment, confusion reigned.

Yes.  Hogwarts was wonderful, but it was terrible too.  It was divisive and damaging.  This grandiose castle, with its magical stairways and its soaring spires and secret courtyards, its classrooms and dungeons, its magnificent hall: this place took young, malleable, innocent minds and it taught them one lesson above all others:

Us and them.

So Gryffindors were brave and spontaneous, but others learned to see them as reckless and aggressive.  Slytherins were subtle and ambitious, but every non-Slytherin viewed that house as a hotbed of sly, sneaking power-mongers.  Hufflepuffs were loyal and kind and generous, until that moment when they became weak, gullible, born to follow.  And Ravenclaws?  Intelligent and innovative; or perhaps a house full of brains-without-ethics, robot geniuses with no empathy at all.

It was all a matter of perspective, and that perspective was gradually, irrevocably, _insidiously_ installed in every student at Hogwarts thanks to the casual attitudes perpetuated by older students and teachers alike.

Us, and them.

And it was all so unnecessary!  Such a meaningless, pointless way of building walls between people: people who had so much more in common than they had differences.  It didn't even make any sense, this system of categorising human minds.  Everyone knew, now, that Harry had come close to being selected for Slytherin until he'd wished so fervently for Gryffindor.  Most people suspected what Hermione knew for a fact: that she could have landed in Ravenclaw as readily as Gryffindor.  But what about people like Ron?  He was pure Gryffindor, of course; she'd even had those thoughts herself.  Except, of course, that she'd seen him strategise; she knew there was a pinch of Slytherin in there.  His intelligence might not have been given to book-learning, but there wasn't a Ravenclaw student in their year who hadn't been beaten at chess by Ron Weasley.  And how could anyone know Ron and fail to see his loyalty?  Hufflepuff all the way.

Standing there, looking at Hogwarts through the bars of the gate, Hermione recognised something that had been coalescing within her mind for quite a long time: she _loathed_ the school's House system; she felt a contempt for it that was as sincere as it was passionate.  Of all the ingredients that had come together to create Voldemort, the way young wizards were taught to think in terms of us-and-them at Hogwarts ranked high among them.

And it was never-ending, she realised.  Once Hogwarts was fixed and looking to welcome a new train-load of eleven year olds later this year, the whole thing would start up again.  Enter the Sorting Hat, and there'd be more House selections, more us-and-them.  Maybe in the years to come a new student would show up at Hogwarts: someone with the potential to be either a Tom Riddle or a Harry Potter, depending on the subtle differences of choice and experience.

It could happen.  She believed it could.  But what the hell could she do to make sure Voldemort Mark Two – the sequel – didn't threaten the Wizarding World twenty years from now?

"I am so fucking _tired_ of trying to make a difference," she said to herself.

The words surprised her with their vitriol and their honesty, mainly because she'd always considered herself to be too stubborn to give up.  She sighed hard and pulled out her wand, and she conjured a Patronus to send a message to Professor McGonagall.

~~~

It happened halfway up the drive.  On Hermione's right was the ruined Quidditch pitch, with its collapsed wooden stands and crater-riddled earth.  On her left, darkened by the more distant edge of the Forbidden Forest, was Hagrid's hut and the various outbuildings that had been added during her time at Hogwarts, to facilitate Hagrid's additional role in Care of Magical Creatures.  Further ahead, the Whomping Willow: the scene of many memories.

A sudden barrage of shouts and cries clamoured in her ears: sounds that had been caught by just the right gust of Highland breeze and blown her way.  The alarm in those voices tripped something in Hermione's brain.  One moment she was walking, cautiously but steadily.  The next moment: fight or flight.

She froze.  The sudden sense of panic had paralysed her.

A second, maybe two...

...then a huge resounding CRASH–

Hermione didn't speak, or shout, or scream.  She had learned that when danger threatened the last thing you wanted to do was draw attention to yourself.  Her peripheral awareness identified the nearest place of cover.  Wand already drawn from her sleeve without thinking, she dived to her left, rolled, and hunkered her body down in the hollow behind a large mossy boulder.

She breathed, counted to ten, then risked a look.  Dust was rising in the distance, and she squinted to see.  Her heart was pounding hard.  She checked other directions because Death Eaters knew well enough how to flank their enemies.  Merlin, why had she refused to let Ron and Harry accompany her today?  She ducked back down, feeling exposed, and considered.  Death Eaters hiding in the forest, launching a revenge attack...oh, Merlin, the fucking forest was less than a hundred yards away, and probably still full to brimming with creatures and dark wizards and–

"Hermione?"

She gasped and wriggled round to come up half on her back but with her wand arm true and steady.  A full body-bind curse had been thrown before she even remembered that she'd learned to do that one voiceless.

And the towering, gentle, ever-so-slightly concerned figure of Hagrid toppled back onto the grass behind them like a felled tree trunk.

For a moment, all Hermione could hear was the rapid panting of her own breath.  There was a tightness in her chest that was so immediate that she wondered about cardiac arrest.  Her whole body was tremulous with tension.

Then, in the distance, a roar of laughter, followed by more boisterous voices.

The world came crashing back in with a wash of light that made her blink.  For the last thirty seconds she'd been quite convinced it was the middle of the night.

What the hell had just happened?

More importantly, what the hell was the counter-curse for the full body-bind?

Hermione scrambled to her knees and crawled over to where Hagrid lay.  Fortunately he had not fallen in such a way that might cause more damage than the odd bruise.  His face was frozen in that expression of inquisitive concern, and Hermione had to pinch her lips hard together to keep from falling apart.

Her brain sorted out its priorities, and she cast the counter-curse.  Hagrid blinked and looked up at her, then he smiled a broad smile of welcome.

"I'm so sorry, Hagrid!  I panicked.  I thought – I mean, there was such a loud noise and then the dust, and everything went dark and I thought we were under attack, and...oh, god, are you all right?  Did I hurt you?  I'm so sorry, so sorry–"

Hagrid managed to shrug his shoulders, even as he lay prone on his back, and the smile didn't waver.  "Hullo Hermione," he said jovially.  "Got me a good one there, didn' you!"

It was no good.  The pressure in her throat was undeniable.  For the second time in recent memory, Hermione burst into tears in the presence of another person.

~~~

They sat side by side, their backs to the big boulder, the grass beneath them thankfully dry.  Hermione leaned against Hagrid's comfortable and reassuring side as they talked their way through her gasps and hiccups.

"Think they dropped the 'Stronomy spire," Hagrid said.  He glanced at her.  "Oops?"

"Oops," she agreed.

"Not to worry.  This'll be the third time they've put the pieces together.  They're prob'ly getting good at it now."

She snorted.  "I hope no one got hurt."

"Doubt it.  They cast a wadjamacallit.  Safety net.  Any falling bits get stopped before they hits the ground.  Summat to do with air and pressure and, oh, I dunno.  But when it gets hit it makes a big bang."

"Maybe like jets going supersonic."

"I, er, dunno what that is."

"Never mind."  She sighed.  "Forgive me?"

"Course.  I'm jus' grateful you didn' go for the pimple jinx.  Or the hair-loss one.  I don' think I'd look very good with no hairs."

Hermione nodded.  "Much better with hairs," she agreed.

"You feelin' better now, are you?"

"I think so."

Hagrid shook his big, beardy head.  "What were you thinkin', Hermione, comin' here this first time after everything on yer own?  Couldn' Harry an' Ron come with you?"

"They offered.  I told them not to.  I said I needed to prove I could do it by myself."  She laughed a humourless laugh.  "Turns out I can't."

"Thing is," Hagrid said, "most stuff goes easier when you've a friend by your side."

Simple wisdom, and from a source so many people dismissed as intellectually challenged.

"How long have you been back?" she asked.

"Oh, week or so.  Thestrals will be foalin' come next month.  And those buggers in the Aurory, you know what they did?   They used my foalin' barn as a wadjamacallit.  Put all the dead nasties in there."

"Morgue."

"Aye, one o' them.  Place reeks like a Jubbersting's dung-heap.  And Thestrals are sensitive creatures, you see, with an excellent sense of smell.  Can't have them dropping babies in there, now can I?  So I tore the place down once it was emptied.  I'm buildin' a new one.  Some o' they architects over at the castle, they been 'elpin' out.  Nice people."

"That's good.  I'm glad the Thestrals will have a nice clean place."

Hagrid nodded at that.  "You know," he said musingly, "seems to me, come the new term, there'll be a lot more students can see 'em clear as daylight."

Because, of course, Thestrals were invisible only to those people who had not witnessed death.

She nodded.  It was a depressing thought.  "Probably true."

He sighed, then heaved his massive frame out of their hollow.  Once standing, he reached down and hauled Hermione to her feet.

"Come on then, young Hermione," he said.  "Professor McGonagall's no doubt waitin'."

"Yes."

"Well.  I'll walk you to the doors."

She wanted to decline, just as a show of strength, but she didn't.  After all, everything went easier with a friend by your side.

~~~

Up on the battlements close to the North Tower, Hermione found Professor McGonagall in animated conversation with a robust-looking witch with glossy black hair and Middle Eastern appearance.

"...as it was before!" the Professor was insisting, as she waved a vague wand-arm over the crumbled crenellations of the stonework.

"Why do that when we can make it better?" the other witch demanded, fire in her eyes, hands on hips.

"It doesn't need to be better!  It was as good as it could be before Death Eaters started throwing curses around!"

"If it was so good, why is it so much rubble now, then?  Tell me that!"

Professor McGonagall gasped in outrage.  The other witch made her expression innocent, though Hermione knew she'd been spotted as she walked cautiously up behind her former Head of House.

"Put it back the way it was," McGonagall ground out, her Edinburgh twang less genteel than it usually sounded, roughened as it was by anger.

"Oh, Minerva, don't be so obtuse.  You _know_ what the reunification charms are like," the black-haired witch said.  Her own excellent English and formal diction was made exotic by the hint of an accent, not dissimilar to the way Padma and Parvati's mother had spoken on the single occasion Hermione had met her.  "Do I have to give you the lecture?  We can bring the pieces together and you'd never know they were broken, but for the fact that the strength is never the same again."

Hermione nodded to herself.  She'd learned the charm for repairing broken pottery back in third year.  The repaired pot would ever be more brittle than the original version.  It was one of the reasons why Transformation could be so useful.  A broken teacup could be remade into a fragile teacup, or it could be made into something different: something that didn't come with an inherent weakness.

There was a pause.  Hermione wanted to announce her presence because otherwise it might seem like she was eavesdropping, but there was a tension in this conversation that didn't invite interruption.

Then Professor McGonagall sighed, very hard.  "What can you do?" she asked of the other witch.

"Well, if you don't like my idea of wave-shaped crenellations–"

"I most certainly do not," McGonagall said haughtily.

"–then...what about a taller crenellation with slit-windows, say every ten paces or so?   Then it will match the design around the roof of the west wing, and it will strengthen the stone again, and it will also provide potential cover.  Just in case this castle comes under attack in the future."

Professor McGonagall winced.  "Not even in jest, Ravan, dear.  The very thought!"

"But...?" the witch named Ravan prompted.

"But you shall do as you like.  You always do."

"Excellent!  I'll get started!"

McGonagall grumbled something about this being the fourth time Ravan had got her way in recent weeks, then she noticed that the other witch was looking past her shoulder and wearing a smile of welcome.  The professor turned around, noticed Hermione, and her grumbling-face was immediately replaced by a look of welcome.

"Hermione!  My dearest girl, I'm so sorry.  I meant to come down and meet you in the entrance hall, but Ravan here distracted me with her finicky architect's nonsense."

Ravan snorted at the professor, then turned an interested eye on Hermione.  "Miss Granger.  I thought you looked familiar.  You're part of the 'Golden Trio'."

"Oh.  Um, yes, I suppose that's me," Hermione agreed.  She shook the witch's hand.  "I didn't know we were so well known."

"One has only to read the papers.  A terrible thing, your community has been through.  And it took three stout-hearted children to put things to rights."

Hermione gave a shrug.  "I'm not sure I've felt like a child for quite some time, now.  And I think even Harry would have struggled to defeat Voldemort without the assistance given by Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape."

"Hmm.  Still.  The world is a much better place because you and your two young friends came into it.  That must be a nice thing to know."

Hermione had never thought about it in those terms.  It felt borderline arrogant, so she put the thought aside.  "Anyway, it's nice to meet you, um...?"

"Ravan Shahidi," the witch said.

"Oh!  You must be the Iranian architect that Anthony Goldstein was so excited to have as part of the reconstruction team."

Ravan arched a brow at Professor McGonagall.  "Goldstein?"

"The fair-haired laddie who won't leave Theodore Little alone in the Great Hall."

"Ah, yes, the fresh-faced boy of a thousand blushes."

"Aye, that's him."

"Anthony's here?" Hermione asked.

"He's been here for two weeks, now.  Since he was discharged from St. Mungo's.  Turned up with his parents and begged to be allowed to stay and help."

"How's his legs?"

"Good as new."

Hermione smiled widely.  In the middle of a summer than had become noteworthy for her failures, it was nice to enjoy a small success.  Anthony's legs were better, and she'd helped a bit in that.

Professor McGonagall took her leave of Ravan and steered Hermione back along the battlements into the North Tower, then down to the staircases which would return them to the ground floor.  As they walked, she said, "I was quite surprised to get your message, dear.   I rather thought you and your friends might have needed a bit of a break from this old place."

"Well, I suppose–"

"No, no, you're quite right.  Get back on the broomstick, quick as you like!  I approve."

Hermione grimaced.  "You might remember that broomsticks and I have never really got along."

"Well, just a metaphor, dear, just a metaphor.  Now then.  Do you want to say hello to Anthony?  And Neville's around the side with Pomona, putting the greenhouses back together – what a strapping young man that nervous wee lad has turned into!"

"Neville's here too?  I had no idea."

"Well, people like to keep busy after traumatic events.  I mean, no need to tell you.  Poppy explained what happened in St. Mungo's – silly girl, you should take better care of yourself.  And I think there's an aspect of wanting to get used to being back here before term starts in September.  Quite sensible, really."

"I see.  Yes, well, that's rather what I wanted–"

Professor McGonagall, walking just ahead of Hermione as they navigated the static stairways still awaiting reactivation, held up the hand that was not holding her walking stick.  "Not a word, my dear!  Not until we've had some tea.  I am parched beyond belief.  Arguing with that Middle Eastern harridan up there always takes it out of me."

"She seems to know what she's doing," Hermione ventured.

"Oh, best of the best, dear, best of the best.  I've known her thirty years, since she did her NEWT years here.  Half-blood, you know.  Her father's high up in the Muggle dimplematic circles, spent a couple of years here in the sixties as an ambassador."

"It's, er, 'diplomatic'."

"Is it really?  Like the word for being gracious?"

"Yes."

Professor McGonagall stopped, halfway up the staircase that led to the first floor corridor.  "That, I suppose, makes sense," she decided.  Then she resumed her walking, and led Hermione to that most familiar of professorial offices, right on the corner next to the Serpentine stairway.  As usual, and in spite of the clemency of the weather, there was a welcoming fire in the grate.  Also true to form, the office held a clutter of books and scrolls stacked all around and an unfeasible number of things with a tartan theme.

Hermione was waved into one of the fireside armchairs as the professor snapped a, "Briny!" into thin air.  A House Elf appeared, neatly turned out in a clean and pressed cotton smock embroidered with the Hogwarts coat of arms.  "Tea, Briny, please.  And a bannock or two if there's some on offer."

Briny looked outraged.  "Headmistress lady is suggesting House Elves fail in their baking duties?"

"Of course not."

"Well, then, is silly question.  Is biscuits.  Of course is biscuits.  This is Hogwarts!"

"Enough of your backchat, Briny."

Briny sniffed at the professor.  "Headmistress lady should be in headmistress office."  Then she popped out of the room, conveniently avoiding any of Professor McGonagall's mounting exasperation.

The professor sighed at Hermione as she shed her shawl.  "She's quite competent, of course, Briny, and loyal to a fault – and, now, you needn't look at me like that, young lady, I'm quite aware of your thoughts on the issue, but the fact is that the House Elves who made it through the battle came back of their own accord.  They want to be here.  And Briny wept with happiness when I offered to stitch her the school crest on her smock.  She said it was the best gift anyone had ever given her."  Professor McGonagall's nose twitched to the side.  "Of course, that was after a long and involved conversation about how embroidering her clothing and then returning it to her did not, in fact, make that clothing a gift.  Only the stitches.  Which could not be considered clothing, since on their own they wouldn't cover a baby dormouse."

"I see," Hermione said politely.  Though she was becoming disconcerted by the professor's uncharacteristic loquaciousness.  Then, defensively, "You know, I have actually learned a little bit more about House Elves since my campaign back in fourth year."

"No doubt, dear."  The professor sat down and proceeded to unbutton her boots so she could slide her feet into the slippers which sat ready beside the chair.

"May I ask – I mean, I know you were given the Headmistress's position here immediately after the, er, the events last month.  So–"

"So why am I hiding away in this little cubbyhole when I've got a great big office, a library and much nicer quarters at my disposal just past that stroppy little gargoyle?"

"Well, yes."

The professor sighed and stared at the flickering flames of her fireplace.  "Call it cowardice, if you will, and have done."

Hermione couldn't swallow a snort of disbelief.  "That is _not_ a word I would ever associate with you!" she exclaimed.

"I'm glad to hear it.  But it would be dishonest not to admit to a reluctance.  Those rooms – every time I'm in there, I'm confronted either by Albus or Severus.  Both of them such great losses."  She frowned.  "So many mistakes.  Misunderstandings."

"Severus Snape isn't dead," Hermione pointed out gently, the words reminding her of a similar misunderstanding that had happened only a few days earlier.

"He's refused to come back," Professor McGonagall said.  "I offered him the position of Deputy Head.  His choice between Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts."  She gathered herself and sat forward.  "I told him, right to his face, right in that nasty little cell they're calling a hospital ward – we got things very, very wrong with Severus, and he deserves better.  I told him!"

"Um, you told him what, sorry?"

"That I want to make a statement!  Welcome him back to his home.  Here.  Show the whole of Wizarding Britain that Minerva McGonagall, along with every member of the Hogwarts school board, acknowledges Severus Snape as the decent man that he is!"

"He didn't want that?"  Hermione wondered why her stomach felt fluttery.

"Not a bit of it.  The young jackanapes laughed in my face.  Well, as much of a laugh as his poor throat can manage at the moment.  Told me that he'd spent nearly twenty years teaching in this – and I quote – 'dreadful drafty castle, trying to impart knowledge to nasty little brats about things that their sluggish brains can't begin to process'."

Hermione had to tamp down on the urge to smirk, even if she herself had been effectively dismissed as nasty, little, brat-ish and intellectually sluggish with the insult.

Professor McGonagall shook her head.  "He said he'd been unhappy in this school since he was eleven years old.  More than two thirds of his life.  He's still a young man, of course, though no doubt you don't see him that way.  He says he wants something different now."

"What does he want?" Hermione pressed.

"Oh, my dear, I haven't the foggiest.  And I'm not sure he knows either."  McGonagall offered her a rare smile.  "But he told me he forgives me for thinking the worst of him.  Mainly, he says, because that was exactly what I was supposed to do – though I ken I saw something in those eyes, just brief, that was glad I'd bothered to ask forgiveness at all."

Briny arrived with a loud pop and a tea tray.  She placed it on the table just behind the two chairs.

"Headmistress lady wants me to be pouring?" the House Elf asked.

"Thank you, Briny, no, you can leave it to me."

Briny sniffed her unimpressed sniff and popped out.  McGonagall made to heave herself out of the armchair.

"May I?" Hermione asked, springing to her feet.

"Oh.  Thank you, my dear."  As Hermione went over to sort out two cups of tea, the professor settled back and sighed.  "My wit is sharp, my wand-arm swift, and I've been fortunate to have the constitution of a particularly athletic centaur for my whole life.  If it weren't for the way my legs fail to keep up with the rest of me, I'd still be running rings around everyone."

Hermione smiled with a burst of affection for this no-nonsense, lion-hearted professor.  "I don't doubt it," she said.

"I must admit," McGonagall went on, "I tussled with it.  The position of Headmistress, I mean.  There was something about the events of the last few months that told me it was time to call it a day.  Sink myself into a well-earned retirement like it's, ohh, a nice hot bath."

"No one could have claimed you don't deserve it," Hermione said carefully, "though I think the school will recover better with you at the helm."

"So it was pointed out to me," the professor said.  She took the cup and saucer Hermione offered her: very little milk and half a teaspoon of sugar; even a year away hadn't allowed Hermione to forget how those people closest to her like their tea.  McGonagall lifted her gaze and gave Hermione a stern look when she sat back down beside the fire.  "Sometimes we all have to make the harder choice, for the greater good."

There was a moment of pause as they looked at each other.  Hermione looked away first.

"You know what I came here to say," she surmised.

"I had my suspicions."  McGonagall rested her head back against the armchair and studied Hermione.  "If you'd wanted busy-work like young Anthony, you'd have been here two weeks ago.  If you had a vocation, like Neville, you'd be doing that right now.  And if you were set on following the path most in Wizarding Britain have already mapped out for you, I'd be expecting you on the first day of the new term and there'd be no reason for you to pop back here and see your old professor.  That leaves only one more possibility.  You came to tell me something to my face, something I don't want to hear, because you're too decent and true to rely on an owl."

Hermione blinked.  "Very well deduced.  I should buy you a deer-stalker.  And a magnifying glass."

"What a ridiculous thing to say."

"Not if you were raised Muggle."  She smiled sadly.  "Okay then.  Go ahead and tell me.  I need to come back because of the greater good."

There was a pause between them.  Hermione recognised something extraordinary: this was a meeting that was taking place between two women, two accomplished witches who knew and liked and respected each other.  This was not a meeting between teacher and student, never mind how many times she and Harry and Ron had been hauled over the coals in this very office for their childhood escapades.

Professor McGonagall finally sighed and took a sip of tea.  "I need you back here."

"I can't imagine why."

"Head girl," the professor said, and glanced her way as if holding out a bribe.

"Really?"  She considered.  "Because I think...I think I'd be a _terrible_ head girl."  Hermione hesitated.  Her own reaction had surprised her.  There'd been a time during her Hogwarts career when she'd dreamed of receiving that accolade: the ultimate position within the student body.  The peak!  Top of the tree.

"How can you say that!" McGonagall protested.

"I'm broken," Hermione confessed.  "Right now.  Not irreparably.  I think I'll get better.  I get glimpses.  But right now I'm broken.  I get panic attacks and flashbacks.  I get buried in anger.  I hope for confrontations and I resent it when they don't happen.  I get two or three good nights of sleep a week, which is a lot better than I was doing a month ago, but I still get those other four or five nights when I wake up screaming."

"And therefore you'll know exactly how to relate to all the younger children who'll be going through similar traumas."

"I'll know what they're going through, yes.  But I won't be able to _help_ them.  I'm prone to dark moods and fits of rage, and the best thing I can do at the moment is to try to keep those moments to myself."

"Don't you want to sit your NEWTs?"

"Of course I do.  That's why I came here.  I wanted to know if there was something that could be arranged to get them done as quickly as I can.  You know better than anyone which subjects I'd probably pass right now.  You know that I'd need Professor Slughorn to be available for some private tuition to get me through NEWT Potions."

"Why would I help you arrange that when I'd be cursing my own big toe!"

It took Hermione a moment to translate the expression into 'shooting myself in the foot'.

"Because you know me," she finally replied.  "You know what I've been through.  You know how hard I work.  You know that if I could do anything to help then I would.  You know I'm not making up an excuse just to get out of class."

McGonagall was quiet for a while, then she finished her cup of tea and stood up.  She collected Hermione's cup and went to refill them both from the pot.  Before she sat down again, she retrieved a scroll from the table.

Once settled, the professor said, "Sixty-three students.  That was your year, all who returned to year six after OWLs."  She pulled open the scroll and placed the glasses which dangled around her neck on a cord onto the bridge of her nose.  "Fourteen."  She looked up at Hermione.  "That's how many want to return this year to redo their final year and sit their NEWTs."

Almost fifty students had dropped out.  Hermione had expected numbers to be down, of course she had, but almost fifty?

"I've lost all the Slytherins," McGonagall went on, "because even the ones with no family association to the Death Eaters feel accused, just the same.  Virtually all the Ravenclaws have already made alternative arrangements with Beauxbatons."  McGonagall's voice took on a rasping edge of anger.  "Turns out Beauxbatons have taken on a few new professors who can teach those students whose first language is English.  So _nice_ of them to help."  She glared at the scroll.  "Of the rest, about fifteen have simply decided to forgo NEWTs and take up the various employment offers being made by St. Mungo's, Flourish and Blotts, and of course – as well you know, given Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley's choice – Magical Law Enforcement."

"I see."

"You don't.  Not yet.  Because it isn't only your year.  The year below has so far seen a thirty per cent drop-out rate, and we're only just into June.  The year below that – almost twenty per cent.  It stabilises by the time we get to last year's second years, right up until we consider the new first years who are due here in autumn."

"And?"

"Fifty-eight names were sent letters.  Only twenty-nine have responded."

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.  They've got until the end of July, if I remember correctly."

"Yes, yes, that's true.  But it's the students who haven't responded – that's the problem.  The ones who seem reluctant come from the families that have even the tiniest affiliation with Slytherin.  They might be the latest of three generations of confirmed Hufflepuffs, but if great-great-Uncle Algernon was sorted into Slytherin, well..."  McGonagall let the scroll roll back up, and she waved her arms briefly in despair.  "They won't risk it.  Their child comes here, sits under the Sorting Hat, is found to be Slytherin – they think it'll now be a black mark for life."

Hermione nodded.  "It isn't hard to see their point."

"How can you say that!"

She wanted to say, _'Because I have eyes in my head and the ability to think straight.  Obviously.'_   But as much as this was a meeting between two women, Professor McGonagall was still her old teacher, and Hermione couldn't entirely overcome her reluctance to challenge authority.  So she evaded the question by saying, "Of course, you know one of the first things you could do to start fixing this?"

"I've already told you!  I need you here!  You're a high-profile witch with formidable intelligence and a heroic reputation.  If you come back, others will follow."

"I'm sorry.  Truly.  But I can't be your celebrity endorsement.  And even if I could, all it would do is exacerbate the very problems you just described.  It would be another example of Gryffindor being favoured, being respected, over and above all other Houses."

"Hermione!"

"Hear me out."  Hermione finished her second cup of tea and set her cup aside on the mantel, then she leaned forward.  "What you need...is a Slytherin head girl, or boy.  Probably not both – that would just be too obvious and contrived.  But one of them.  You also need a better Head of House than Professor Slughorn.  He wasn't remotely Death Eater material, but everyone thinks of him as a collector of influence, and most people don't admire that."

Professor McGonagall, who had all but choked on her tea when Hermione had made this suggestion, calmed herself and put her own cup and saucer down.  "Setting aside, for now, the fact that I won't _have_ any Slytherins in your year, I'm not sure I could bring myself to name a Slytherin head student.  Albus would spin in his grave!"

"And that, Professor, is called discrimination, and it's the reason students don't want to come back."

"But they're Slytherin!"

"Again – discrimination."

"Mind your manners, Miss Granger.  I'll remind you that I've a few years of experience on you, and while your recent exploits might have earned you some degree of latitude–"

"And that, right there, is another of the reasons I can't come back."  She took half a second to draw a deep breath and remind herself that this needed to be said, no matter how hard it was to disappoint a witch she admired so greatly.  "I'm not a child any more, Professor.  Even if I have lots of learning and maturing still to do.  I'm certainly no longer the kind of person who can stand to be told to shut up when they voice inconvenient truths."  Trying to soften the words, she added, "No matter how much respect and affection I have for the teacher I'm speaking with."

There was a long pause.  Hermione wondered whether she'd entirely burned her bridges with this woman: her longest-standing protector and champion in Hogwarts.

"Who would you suggest?" McGonagall finally asked.

"For what?"

"Slytherin head boy or girl."

"Tracey Davis," Hermione replied promptly.  "If you can convince her to come back.  She shared a dorm with Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode for the six years I knew her, and she managed to keep on friendly terms with them even though she's a half-blood and she never joined in when the rest of them tried to harm me.  She's clever, diplomatic, she can navigate different loyalties.  I'd definitely consider her."

"Tracey Davis.  I'm not sure..."  McGonagall frowned.

"No one ever noticed her.  When you're constantly surrounded by people like Parkinson, you fade into the background.  And for the record – once, in fifth year, she found a first year Gryffindor lost between the Potions lab and the Slytherin common room.  Could have been nasty.  But she whisked the kid away before something awful could happen, found me by chance up on the Transfiguration corridor and handed him off with just a quick word of advice that I not let him go wandering alone in the dungeons."

"Tracey Davis," McGonagall mused.  "Chestnut hair.  Pretty in a gentle, natural kind of way."

"That's her."

"Not much of an athlete, I recall."

"So many of us are not," Hermione pointed out.

"And if I can't persuade her to come back?"

"You probably could, if you explain the reasoning.  But if you can't, choose someone from Ginny's year.  They'll technically be year seven, come September, even if there's a few older students who come back.  And you've got Kevin Bletchley, then.  High profile thanks to his Quidditch prowess, and one of the few Quidditch players who didn't habitually foul the opposition.  Which makes him a more honourable player than most of the Gryffindor team, by the way."

"Hermione!  Where is your loyalty?"

"My loyalty is to my fellow man.  My family and my friends, first of all, but it doesn't stop there.  Don't you get it?  That's the problem with this place.  It isn't just that children are divided into groups; it's that they get taught that non-group members are the enemy, and the rules of good behaviour change depending on who you're dealing with."

McGonagall stared at her for a long, suspended moment.  "You're a different woman to the one who helped evacuate Mr. Potter from Little Whinging a year ago."

"Of course I am.  A lot has happened."  Hermione thought back to the conversation on the battlements.  "I think I'm a bit like the broken stonework of the school.  I'm putting myself back together.  I'm doing my best.  But the way the pieces come together – it's going to have to be different to the way I was before.  If I make myself exactly as I used to be, I'll be fragile my whole life.  Brittle.  Easily shattered."  She frowned and shook her head at herself.  "I don't even know if that makes sense."

"More than you'd think."  The professor looked torn.  "I really can't persuade you to reconsider?  Because for all you've said, you're definitely wrong in one thing – you would be a brilliant head girl."

"I think – all due respect, Professor – that this is the worst place I could possibly be, come September."

McGonagall nodded.  "All right then."  She sniffed.  "You should probably write to Madame Maxime."  Her face twisted, as though the advice tasted bitter in her mouth.  "You'll probably do very well over in France, for a final year."

Hermione thought about that.  "Perhaps.  But I'm not sure exchanging Hogwarts for Beauxbatons would solve all of my problems.  I just don't think I've got it in me to be a schoolchild any more."

"Do you know, my dear – I think you're probably right about that.  Now, have some of those shortbreads that Briny left, because she'll be furious with me if we don't touch them.  Then we'll go and say hello to your friends."

"One other thing, while I've got you," Hermione said.  "Do you know of a book entitled 'Curses and their Counters' by Fotheringhay and Deane?"

McGonagall's eyes widened.  "Who on earth is advising you to look at such stuff and nonsense?"

For some reason, Hermione didn't want to answer that question, though she wasn't sure whom she was protecting.  "I was advised that, while it's a layman's text, it isn't without value."

The professor snorted derisively.  "Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  Well, there's no copy in the school library.  Irma wouldn't stand for it, not after the way Arbuthnot Deane financed the book."

"Oh?  How did he do that?"

McGonagall looked flustered for a moment, then said, "Well if you must know, dear, he was employed by _Sleight of Wand_."

Hermione needed to search her thoughts, before she gasped and said, "Oh, the, er, publisher."

"The publisher of rather graphically illustrated erotica, yes.  'Escapades of Eliza the Enchantress.'  'The Rare Talents of Roger Rogerson.'  And so on."

"Well, I'm not asking you for copies of mucky novels.  If I want those I can buy them readily enough.  I just need 'Curses and their Counters'."

McGonagall sighed.  "You'll need the password to get past the gargoyle.  It is 'Haud your wheesht.'  If there isn't a copy on the bookcase in the alcove behind the desk, you'll need to go through the door with the silver crest on dark wood – the one to the left of the orrery alcove.  Up a short flight of stairs, don't turn left at the end because you'll just end up on the balcony overlooking the office.  Go right, and you'll be in the Headmaster's sitting room.  The bookcase to the left of the door.  Bottom shelf, if I remember correctly."

Hermione went over these instructions in her head.  "Headmistress's," she said.

"Hmm?"

"It's now the Headmistress's sitting room."

"Och – haud your wheesht," McGonagall said in exasperation.

"Oh, it means 'be quiet,' does it?"

"Hush now.  I'd go and find the thing for you, but I've got places I need to be.  I heard that Allan Fitzmichael's team dropped one of the Astronomy spires earlier.  Again."

"Did they?" Hermione said flatly, and went to grab some shortbread.

~~~

Up the spiral stair, and into the grandiose – if cluttered – office of the Headmistress.

Hermione wasn't surprised Professor McGonagall could hardly bring herself to enter the room.  As she stood just inside the doorway and looked around, all she could see were things that reminded her of Albus Dumbledore.  In fact, the only places in the room where Dumbledore's presence wasn't readily evoked were those places too reminiscent of the other recent occupant of these rooms.

Severus Snape.

She breathed deep and made for the alcove with the huge desk, just up some stairs from the main body of the room.  She walked past Fawkes's perch, past the Pensieve, past bowls of forgotten sweeties, and then she stopped dead at a chair beside a tiny occasional table to one side.

On the back of that chair hung a familiar black outer robe.

When she caught herself reaching out to touch it, she snatched her hand back.  So Severus Snape had left some of his robes lying around here.  Hardly surprising.  He'd lived here until quite recently.

How had he endured the memories?  McGonagall couldn't come here without feeling them.  Snape himself must have felt the same, except that he didn't have to wrestle only with his grief.  So much guilt, too.  Was it like a stab to his heart, every time he'd stepped through the door?  Had he left these mementoes of Dumbledore deliberately in place, as a reminder?  Punishment?

Punishment.  Definitely.  She didn't know why she knew it, but she was certain.

She moved on.  Mounted the stairs up to the desk.  Across the mahogany expanse were littered piles of books, papers, scrolls.  One scroll had been stretched and trapped between two weights.  Hermione glanced at it, then glanced away.

Snape's handwriting.  Some kind of a list.

She thought back to all that she'd discovered from Ginny about the last twelve months at Hogwarts.  Torture; propaganda; hiding.  The Carrow siblings and their cruel sadism.  How had Snape made it through that last year?  Of course, he had a cruel streak himself, that was undeniable, but it tended to extend only to his propensity for vicious remarks aimed at children who had no possible recourse.  Deeply unhappy people who felt they had no power over their lives tended to exact revenge for their resentment where they could, and Severus Snape was not nearly so saintly as Harry now wanted to believe.  The man could be a petty, snide, bullying bastard.

But he'd also had the strength, wit and heroism to go through years of darkness simply in order to right an ancient wrong.  Because he'd been able to do that, Hermione was – right at this moment – neither dead, nor in thrall to a Death Eater.

"Ohh fuck," Hermione murmured to herself as all these ideas collided in her head.  She was increasingly wary of where those ideas were taking her.

She scanned the bookshelves for the word Fotheringhay, and did not find it.  A tiny corner of her mind rejoiced.  She clamped down on it, because she had no desire to consciously acknowledge her pleasure at this excuse to examine Snape's private quarters.

She was shivering.  It wasn't cold, but her skin was pebbled with gooseflesh and her hands shook.

She walked back to the orrery, access to which was via twin staircases beyond the Pensieve table.  In all likelihood, the most recent memories accessed by that mechanism had been Snape's.  Hermione resisted the urge to linger.

"Stop it," she told herself.

She found the door out of the office area and opened it.  It struck her for a moment that there should be portraits galore in this room, all of them outraged at the way a former student was snooping around in an office that was intended for personages infinitely more important than her.  She glanced back over her shoulder and noted all the spaces where the portraits had once hung.  Presumably they'd been placed in safe storage, maybe even before the battle.  Or maybe McGonagall had taken them down herself, in order to try to acclimatise to the office without being bombarded with comments.

Hermione left the office and crept up the stairs.  The candles in the wall sconces sensed her presence and lit her way.  Her fingertips trailed along the worn-smooth banister.

Her heart was beating too fast.

"Stop it," she hissed at herself, a second time.

Left to the balcony; right to the sitting room.  Hermione turned right and stepped through another dark wood door.  Again, candles in wall sconces flared into life.

The sitting room was much smaller than the office below, taking up only a slice of the Headmaster's Tower.  There was a leaded window in the curved external wall, behind the long sofa which was arranged to make the most of a fireplace.  A low table held a stack of periodicals: The Brewer, Potions Quarterly, New Wizarding.  At the end of the sofa was another black robe, draped over the back.

She studiously ignored the door just along from the fireplace which would no doubt lead into the Headmaster's private bed chamber.  Instead she turned her attention to the bookshelf McGonagall had described.

It was empty.  Nothing on it, nor the three shelves above.

Hermione frowned in annoyance.  She hadn't come all this way, and found herself thinking dangerous thoughts that she _so_ was not going to acknowledge just yet, only to be thwarted by an empty shelf...

A trunk to one side.  Hardwood, silk-lined, with its top propped open against a shelf further along the bookcase.  Hermione peered inside.  Books.  Had they been taken from the empty shelves, or did they await shelving?  The former, surely.  If Snape had intended to set out his own collection of books in his private space then he'd have done so a year before the battle of Hogwarts.  Perhaps someone had started boxing up Dumbledore's things.  Maybe the House Elves.

Hermione knelt down and began to leaf through the contents.

'The Art of Brewing.'  'Darkest Arts.'  'Rare Herbs and their Uses.'  'Cold Iron and Silver: A Study in the Metallurgy of Cauldrons.'  'The Dispossessed.'  'A History of the Unforgivables.'

Hang on.  'The Dispossessed'?

"Ursula le Guin?" Hermione exclaimed.  "Oh, you've got to be pulling my leg!"  She pulled the hardcover book from the magical tomes surrounding it.  It was a first edition, and the dust jacket had been removed so that the book itself looked less distinct from its shelf-mates.  But it was, very definitely, a Muggle science fiction novel by an author Hermione herself had read and appreciated.

She opened the front cover.  In a hand that was somehow younger and yet still recognisable, the owner of this book had written with care, "Severus Snape, 1975."

Four years before Hermione was born.  Snape would have been, what, sixteen years old?

Suddenly she felt she was intruding in the most appalling way.  She returned the book to the trunk and would have fled, there and then, had the word 'Fotheringhay' not distracted her.  This slimmer volume, bound cheaply in fabric-backed covers rather than leather, had been stuffed in a gap formed where the line of larger books had not quite met the edge of the trunk.

Hermione took the book and opened it out.  Her hands were shaking hard, by this point, and she squeezed her grip on the book's covers to try to keep them still–

The thoughts that came next tumbled through her brain with scary speed.

_'Back there, in the hospital, he was holding the book so tightly to disguise the way his hands were shaking.'_

_'And I mocked him for it.'_

_'He never drank his tea because they just leave it.  There.  On a tray.  And his hands shake too hard for him to sort it out without making a mess.'_

_'And no one noticed.  Or cared.'_

_'And even if they had, there's no way Snape would sit there while someone levitated a cup of tea to his mouth, like he's a child or an invalid.'_

_'He hates showing weakness.'_

Out loud, Hermione said, "Fuck fuck fuckity-fuck."

_'When did I get to know Severus Snape so well?  And if I know him like this, how did I make such a mess of that meeting?'_

"Don't do it," she added to herself.  But her thoughts had already reached their conclusion.

_'I want to save him.  I want to make things better for him, and I want it badly.  Even now, just an hour after I told myself I don't want to make a difference to anyone or anything any more, it's what I want.'_

"Okay.  So I am completely screwed."  Hermione stood up.  She clutched the book to her chest and her eyes darted around.  Then she swung her bag off her shoulder and stashed her prize within.

Her gaze fell on the bedroom door.

Screwed she might well be, but she knew what she had to do, now.

~~~


	6. A Hostage to Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'I made a voodoo doll of you  
>  And I gave it some chicken soup.  
>  Did you feel any warmth down deep inside?  
>  Did you feel how your blues went away and died?"
> 
> John Grant, 'Voodoo doll' 2015

At a quarter past six that evening Hermione stalked past the bored Auror on duty outside Snape's hospital room.  She knocked loudly on the door once, then waited perhaps half a second before losing all semblance of patience amid her gathering concern that someone – a Mediwizard or a Healer or the Auror herself – might yell at her to stop right there.  She shouldered her way through the door before shutting it tightly behind her and leaning on the thing for good measure.

Back in the white room.  Sealed against the world.  Displaced from reality, perhaps?

She looked around, breathing hard from the race up the stairs.  Snape, sitting in exactly the same position he had occupied days earlier, had deigned to look up and acknowledge her entry this time.  For a moment he looked surprised, before bored indifference shuttered his eyes and he looked away.

"Have you entirely lost the ability to take simple instruction, Granger?" he asked in the kind of voice that proclaimed the question as rhetorical.

"Oh, bugger off," she said in response, shocking herself perhaps slightly more than she shocked Snape, whose only reaction was a micro-twitch of an eyebrow.  "You're not my professor any more, remember?"

"Small mercies," Snape muttered.

"You're telling me.  But it does mean you don't get to _instruct_."  She blew out her lips in a horse-like huff of disdain.  "And by the way – I've been pinned to the floor of Malfoy Manor and had my skin sliced open by a mad woman who told Fenrir Greyback he could have me when she was done.  I've half-starved through winter in a tent in a forest.  I've run through battles with Unforgivables flying around me."

"So?"

" _So_ – you should understand that sarcasm, even of your high quality, doesn't leave much of a dent these days."

"Why on earth would you think I've even given the matter any thought?"  He closed the cover of the book in his lap with a loud thud.  His hands – Hermione noticed – did not leave the solid security of the object.  "Leave, Miss Granger.  You and I no longer have any need to converse."

"I don't agree."

"Of course you do not," he said with a sigh.

"And let's face it, I've got a narrow window of opportunity here.  I need to make the most of it.  Before, you know, you recover enough of your magic to pick me up and throw me out the door.  Or your muscle power."  She wrinkled her nose.  "Though you should know I did self-defence classes the summer between my fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts.  Seemed like a sensible precaution, given the way my life was going."

Snape managed to look bored and annoyed at the same time, which was quite the feat in itself.  "I see," he said.  "This is less an ill-conceived visit and more a hostage situation."

"Something like that.  So when do they bring you your dinner?"

Snape blinked at the apparent _non sequitur_ , and then shook his head.  "Why that is any of your business is beyond me."

"Just wondering," she said.  "I mean, given the state of your injuries I can well understand how you're struggling to navigate a tea tray – though why your medical staff haven't noticed?  Well, now that is a question I _would_ like answered."

He glared.  It was the kind of glare that might have prompted laser beams to fly from his eyes in a comic strip.  "Champion me at your peril, Granger."

"That's the idea.  But right now I'm just wondering how you manage to eat.  Because the same problems must apply with your dinner tray."  She realised she was still holding tight to the door handle behind her and forced herself to let it go and relax her stance.  "Isn't like there's a window in here you can chuck stuff out of, is there?"

" _What_?"  Snape peered at her for a moment – a look that would have worked better had he been wearing spectacles halfway down his nose – then shook his head, like even engaging in the discussion was beneath him.

Hermione had, however, perfected the technique of overlooking Severus Snape's sneering disregard a long time ago.

"A window," she said, as if his question had been genuine.  "Lets you get rid of the evidence.  Avoid all those awkward questions about why you're not eating."  She sniffed.  "People won't shut up about your appetite when it's the last thing on your mind."

"Is that so," he said without interest.

"Mmm.  I found the best approach was to just accept the food and then hide it, rather than turn it down.  Makes people whinge on at you less."  She winced at herself.  "Not brilliant, really, is it?  Given all those poor malnourished children in some parts of the world.  And that whole starving-in-a-forest experience I mentioned?  That's made it very difficult not to hoard food."

"Fascinating," he murmured.

"But a couple of times straight after the battle, when I couldn't stomach food and people just kept bloody well bringing it to me?  I had to get creative.  I mean, you can't just Evanesco it – too obvious when your plate goes back pristine.  You need to scrape it somewhere.  Leave gravy stripes and the odd stray pea."  She became aware that she was talking an awful lot, and finished her explanation with a sheepish-sounding, "Um, I found pot plants work quite well."

The façade of inattention slipped and Snape glanced up, irritation bristling.  "What has this to do with anything?"

"Well, we were talking about how you manage your dinner."

"I'm relatively assured that _I_ was not talking about that at all."

"Not yet," she said, trying to sound cheerful.  "I got into a verbal rut.  My explanations often do.  I've finished it now, though."  She smiled at him, steadfastly ignoring the way such a gesture was never going to prompt a smile in return.  "I'd just been wondering about how you even manage to take on nutrition at the moment.  When I realised, after my last visit.  About the, er, tea tray.  You know."

"I see," Snape said after a moment.  "You have identified a puzzle and wish to solve it."

"Puzzles!"  Hermione growled at herself.  "Merlin, I'm an idiot.  How could I forget puzzles?"

Another pause.

Then Snape said, "I am convinced this conversation is _not_ actually going two ways."

Hermione spun around, looking at the room, then checking the door behind her.  She was certain, now, that no one was about to come charging in after her.  She pulled her bag from her shoulder and moved over to the bed in the corner.

"Sorry," she said.  "I'll start at the beginning.  I was at Hogwarts–"

"And still you mistake me for someone who gives a damn."

"...I had to go there.  Couldn't drop out without telling Professor McGonagall face to face, now could I?"

"I do not _care_ about this!" Snape snapped.

She ignored him.  Let him get a taste of how frustrating it was, for once.  "So then stuff happened and I put some things together.  And when I left I ran all the way back to the Three Broomsticks 'cause I'm not good at Apparition at the moment while my head's all over the place.  And then, you know, a load of errands – some I needed to squeeze in before closing time.  Had to dash.  Then I ran all the way here and up the stairs, and here I am."

"None of which qualifies as remotely helpful information," Snape said.  "You are presenting yourself as 'dizzy', Miss Granger, and I have never in my life been impressed or charmed by 'dizzy'."

"Not dizzy.  Just knackered.  Give me a moment to get my thoughts straight, then I can tell you what I've done and get out of your hair.  For good, if you'd like.  I may not take instruction from you any longer, but I've had experience of what it's like, trapped in a hospital bed with no control over your visitors.  I can still do basic courtesy."

"Not on this evening's evidence," Snape said darkly.

"Yes, I know, sorry I told you to bugger off.  But you sort of deserved it.  If not for today then for a hundred other times."  She glanced over her shoulder.  "Go on.  Deny it."

"Hardly worth the effort," Snape murmured.

Hermione smirked to herself.  The smirk slipped when she looked down at her own hands and realised they were trembling.  Nerves, definitely, and a frisson of excitement too.  There was a strange kind of symmetry, noticing this common ground she shared with Snape.  Maybe they could form a society.  Shakers anonymous.

"Snap," she whispered.

"What?"

"Nothing.  Stray thought."

She began to unpack her bead-bag.  The seedless grapes she set on the bedside table.  The torch she had retrieved from the utility room in the house in Banstead – a huge, chunky rubber thing that was designed to be dropped, submerged in water or left out in winter frosts without damaging the electrical mechanism – she placed on the shelf below.  The dressing gown of lengthy, sweeping black she draped over the foot of the bed.

Already it seemed to her that this whiter-than-white room was screaming its disapproval.  This pleased her no end.  Of course, she was careering towards the point where the whole thing could go horribly wrong, so she tried to curb her satisfaction.

She took a deep breath and then started talking.

"When I was five or six," she said to the white wall in front of her, "I had tonsillitis.  A lot."

"Your own _throat_ was telling you to pipe down?"  A light sigh.  "Understandable, I suppose."

"Ha bloody ha.  I got it so much I got this thing called sleep apnea.  It's when you stop breathing for–"

"I was raised Muggle, just like you, Granger.  Refrain from patronising me."

"Right.  So anyway, two months before my seventh birthday my throat got so bad and swollen and horrible that I was taken to hospital.  I had to have a tonsillectomy."

"I see.  Well that was a lovely story.  Thank you for dropping by.  Don't let it happen again.  Good evening, Miss Granger."

"Not done yet," she said, refusing to be unsettled.  She looked around at Snape, but he was resolutely keeping his back to her.  She returned her attention to the bed.  She'd organised everything.  Oh, apart from the book...she summoned it out of her bag and then put it next to the torch.

There.

No, that was no good.  The colourful dust jacket stuck out like a sore thumb on top of the leather-bound magical tomes also on the shelf.  She frowned at it, then shrugged.  To make the thing fit, she'd have to cast a Transfiguration spell on its cover.  And if she did that behind Snape's back, he wouldn't trust anything else that she did that evening because he'd learned a long time ago to assume the worst of everyone.

She'd have to sort it out later.  If she wasn't thrown out of this room before 'later' even happened.  That remained a strong possibility.  Particularly when Snape noticed that his dressing gown had somehow made the journey from his bedroom at Hogwarts to this very room.

"So anyway," she went on, "I went to hospital and had my operation.  And because the tonsillitis had been so bad before surgery, I got kept in.  Three nights.  Which would have been upsetting anyway, for a six year old who was small and confused and in pain.  Even more awkward for me since I was, by that age, getting wild magic flare-ups that no one understood.  And they happened most when I was stressed."

"Hmph," Snape said.  Which was _almost_ participation, wasn't it?

"Fortunately, even though my parents didn't know they had a witch on their hands, they did know the things they could do to calm me down when it all got a bit fraught."

Silence.  Maybe because mentioning the existence of loving and supportive parents meant she'd steered a long way outside Snape's own experience.

Hermione bit her lip briefly and then just kept going.  "So when I woke up after the anaesthetic, I was in a hospital bed, but one that had my own duvet on from home.  It smelled of the fabric softener my family used at the time.  Familiar.  Comforting.  And my favourite soft toys were next to me.  And a stack of books – because yes, I was reading perfectly well at that age, and no, that doesn't make me weird.  I was wearing my softest pyjamas and my dressing gown was tossed over the end of the bed.  And best of all, I got Vimto.  It was my favourite.  I was never usually allowed Vimto.  Mum and Dad are dentists – they were quite strict about sugary drinks.  But having a ravaged, sliced up throat apparently meant the rules changed for a bit.  And when I woke up, one of the first things I remember is the smell of Vimto."

"Offer me a soft toy, Granger, and I shall find a way to forcibly eject you from this room, never mind my current lack of magic or mobility."

Hermione snorted into giggles.  She'd just been visited by the image in her mind's eye of Severus Snape clutching solemnly to Floppity-Flo, her childhood stuffed rabbit.

"No cuddly toys," she promised.  "But I did bring you Vimto."

She left the other things she'd brought on the bed, and took up the plastic bottles she'd picked up from the newsagents round the corner from the entrance to Diagon Alley.  She carried them back to the table and put them down in front of Snape.  Then she grabbed the visitor's chair that had been placed in a distant corner and pulled it over.

"I did not invite you to sit, Granger."

Fortunately for Hermione, by this point Snape's tone of voice was more resigned than outraged.

"No, you didn't," she agreed.  "Anyway, I got you the non-sparkling kind.  I thought the carbonated version might be unpleasant on your throat.  Original flavour, of course, because this no-added-sugar business makes no sense.  You want a drink with no sugar?  Water works quite well.  You want sweet fruity yumminess?  Acknowledge that there's an unfeasible amount of sugar in it and have done."  She shuddered.  "Those diet things all taste of chemicals.  Yuck."

"Granger–"

"Try it."

"I am expected to trust food brought to me by the girl who set my robes on fire?"

For a brief instant, Hermione felt like a deer caught in some particularly bright and rapidly-approaching headlights.

"Shit!" she managed.  "Who told you about that?"

"Albus Dumbledore, you idiot.  Did you think it was a big secret?"

"Er, kind of?" she tried.  Then she sighed.  "Well, if Professor Dumbledore told you then you'll know it was an honest mistake."

"Of course," he said.  "Arson so often is."

"It created the distraction we needed to save Harry's life!"

"A better one would have been setting the dark wizard who was _actually_ trying to kill him on fire."

"Fair point.  But you were doing such a good impression of that dark wizard, yourself."

An eyebrow twitched.  "Thank you."

A moment.  They looked at each other.

Hermione returned her attention to the table and said, "Okay, look.  The bottles are sealed.  You know well enough how Muggle groceries work.  And this is _me_ , Snape!  You've known me seven years.  Why would I try to poison you with Vimto?"

"Why not?  There are twenty years worth of Hogwarts students out there who would happily embrace a moment of revenge against their loathsome Potions professor."

"Well, that's your bloody fault.  You're the one who spent those twenty years being cruel to smaller, weaker people who can't possibly fight back."

He shrugged a bony white-cotton-clad shoulder dismissively.  "The faint glimmers of satisfaction to be found during that time were scarce.  I took them where I could."

"Yeah, I get the whole twisted psychology of it.  For the record, I don't want revenge."

He considered her for a moment.  "Do you know, I suspect you mean that, Granger."

"Good.  Because it's true."

"Actually, what it _is_...is pathetic.  Your generosity of spirit will no doubt eventually be your downfall."

"Maybe.  But not today.  We're talking Vimto here, not Elizabethan revenge tragedies.  Look – if you want to choose a bottle and make me drink the other first then that's fine.  Or I'll drink out of both – if the notion of something touching my mouth before yours doesn't fill you with rabid disgust."

Snape blinked at her, then he shook his head and sighed heavily.  "I accept, Granger, that your heart is in the right place.  You are wildly annoying, far too talkative, and you have something of a saviour-complex, which probably speaks either to your sense of self-importance or your insecurities.  But – acts of arson aside – I have no current reason to doubt your civility."

"Wow."  She thought about the way this conversation had progressed.  "Just...wow.  Wasn't expecting counselling when I came here tonight."  She tilted her head in thought.  "Mind you, my brain is as messed up as they come right now, so maybe I should go with it."  She gestured vaguely at the side of her head.  "For the record?  Tons more insecurities than self-importance."

" _But_ ," Snape said pointedly, "the point remains that I am not interested in your misplaced gestures.  Especially when they manifest in the form of Muggle fruit drinks."

"Try it.  You might like it.  And if you don't then at least you get to lecture me on the abject paucity of my good taste."

Snape heaved a sigh.  He frowned at the bottle.  "I rather think this will be the only way to move the conversation towards its conclusion."  He shot her a glance.  "And make no mistake, Miss Granger, I _long_ for that conclusion."

"Good point!  You forgot to list my infuriating stubbornness along with my other flaws, didn't you?"  She sat back and folded her arms across her chest.  "I am ornery, mulish and utterly pigheaded."

"You are also good at choosing seventeen words when one will do perfectly well."

She beamed.  "Thank you.  So, want me to crack the seal?"

"What?"

She waved at the bottles.  "The caps.  They can be tight."

He took one bottle up in a hand that trembled as soon as it had left its position of safety, flat against the book on his lap.  "My strength returns.  Gradually," he said shortly.  "The pain is lessening each day."

"That's really good to know," she said, surprised by the rush of gladness that accompanied Snape's comment.

He looked at her a moment, as if taken aback by her sincerity, then he examined the plastic cap on the bottle.  Hermione helped him out by picking up the other bottle and opening it as demonstratively as she could: twisting off the top and pulling up the sports cap.  Snape struggled a bit, but he wasn't about to ask for help and she wasn't going to embarrass him by offering again.

"You'll need a bit of a squeeze on the bottle," she advised, "otherwise liquid won't come out of the little top bit that you just pulled up."

For a moment, Snape's glare was almost enough to make her shed the mantle of courage she'd gathered around her before this meeting.  Hermione felt its burn, and considered excusing herself from the room: probably tripping over her own feet in the process.  Still, she held firm and chugged back several mouthfuls of Vimto.  She smiled at the flavour.  It had been a long time.  This choice of soft drink was more of a nostalgia trip, now, than something she'd go out of her way to choose.  But with those distant memories of hospital it had seemed somehow right.

"Funny," she said, considering the bottle.  "I'll be nineteen in a month or two.  My parents are on the other side of the world and giving serious thought to never seeing me again.  And yet...I still feel just a bit naughty, drinking Vimto like this."

Snape drank more cautiously, but Hermione was pleased to see that being able to hold on to the bottle and direct the narrow sports cap to his mouth allowed him to drink without risking a mess.  The issue he currently had was the shaking of his hands: any vessel that had a wide open lip was going to be awkward.  But this, he could control.

When he lowered the bottle he grimaced.  "Merlin's beard.  It's sweeter than Butterbeer."

"Little bit."

"Have you no concern for diabetic coma?"

"Oh, I think we'll be okay.  We survived battles.  And Bellatrix.  We can cope with Vimto."

He snorted.  He took another drink.

Then he put his book to one side on the table.  Maybe it was because he now had something else to hang on to.  Or perhaps he'd decided that any further attempt to disguise the tremors in his recovering body was hardly worth the effort.  Either way, it felt oddly like a milestone in their burgeoning connection.  Like a moment of trust; a discarding of pretence.

"Well then, Granger," he said.  "Since you insist on inflicting your company upon me..."

"I am unapologetically insistent," she agreed.

"Then you'd better explain why you are doing something so monumentally _stupid_ as dropping out of Hogwarts before your final exams," he demanded.

"Oh, that?  Whole bunch of reasons.  But mainly because I had a panic attack this afternoon when I walked up the driveway."  She hid her face behind her Vimto bottle, pretending to read the label.  "I can't be there.  Not any more."

His eyes narrowed as he considered her.  "And of course, you are no longer a schoolchild."

"Is it that obvious?"

Was that flirtatious?  Surely it wasn't as flirtatious as, _'Oh, Mr. Snape, so kind of you to notice...'_

"It is obvious," he said flatly.  "You should still attempt to sit your NEWTs.  It would be a waste, otherwise."

"I agree.  If you know a way to make it happen, I'm open to suggestions.  Professor McGonagall thought maybe Beauxbatons, but that doesn't get rid of the second problem."

Snape shook his head with the same delicate efficiency of motion that his eyebrow twitches claimed.  "Beauxbatons stands on even more ceremony and ritual than Hogwarts.  It demands hierarchical subservience alongside an almost evangelical need for elegance."  He sniffed.  "It would not be a good fit for you."

Hermione smiled slowly.  "Never thought I'd hear myself say it, but I've missed your insults."

"I'd think you would find it more insulting to be deemed suitable for a school that places such importance on the superficial."

She bought some time to respond by grabbing another drink from her bottle.  "Okay," she said.  "That's probably the first nice thing you have ever said to me.  It feels extremely unsettling."

"Then my work here is complete," Snape said.  His smirk was gone in a flash, but it had been there.  She was sure of it.

"I think what I need is a sort of sixth form college," she said.  "Like the stepping stone between some Muggle secondary schools and university.  Where students are given more freedom to design their own schedules."

"I know of no such place in the Wizarding world.  My knowledge does not extend beyond the Wizarding schools of Europe, however."

She frowned.  "The Americas?  Australia, even?  I suppose it's worth some research..."

"Then your path forward is clear."  Snape sat back a little.  "Did Minerva not offer to arrange extra tuition outside of Hogwarts?"

"Nope.  She wanted me to go back.  She was reluctant to do anything that means I don't _have_ to go back."  Hermione pulled a face.  "She wants me to be Head Girl.  I told her I was a terrible choice, even putting aside the panic-attack issue."

"I can imagine worse choices."

"And that's two nice things you've said to me today.  Steady on."

"Your yardstick for compliments is amusingly low," he countered.  "I assume they are a rarity in your life."

"These days," she agreed with a nod.  "But if I'm amusing you, at least it's keeping you talking to me."

"And why is that important to you, Hermione Granger?" he asked, a dangerous undertone to his injury-roughened baritone.

She studied him for what felt like a long time: long enough for Snape himself to shift in his seat under her scrutiny.  Then she said, "Since the battle I've been angry.  A lot.  Or resentful, or hostile, or aggressive.  It gets to be hard work, keeping those feelings hidden from the people in my life.  Most of them are as traumatised as I am.  It isn't fair, making them deal with my issues on top of their own.  And when I'm not angry, I'm frightened.  Jumping at shadows.  Sensing danger when there's nothing there.  Being scared of myself, half the time."

"That is not an answer."

"It's the precursor to the answer."  She sighed.  "I noticed when I came here the first time – I noticed I was feeling annoyed and irritated, but I didn't feel _enraged_.  I was nervous, but I wasn't _scared_.  And that struck me as weird, frankly.  Of all the people who've been caught up alongside me in this war, you're probably one of the ones who ought to make me feel _most_ angry and _most_ terrified."

"Clearly my talents are slipping," he murmured.

"Well, you're not exactly on top form yourself right now.  Big tear in your throat, regenerating nervous system, minimal magic.  Let's face it, if you'd been able to chuck me out of this room ten minutes ago you'd have done so, never mind the Auror outside who might take exception to an act of actual bodily harm."

"Allow me to summarise your position," Snape said after a moment.  "You have decided to intrude upon my time in hospital because the monstrous Potions professor from the dungeons who made your life miserable for six years is now, somehow, a balm to your traumatised soul?"

Hermione smiled a small smile.  "Especially when he is at his most sarcastic, it seems," she acceded.

"You have developed an alarming streak of masochism, Granger."

"Possibly.  I have no real frame of reference for that.  But I suspect it's more likely that I need conversations in my life that are different to Harry's combination of support and neediness, and Ron's slightly passive-aggressive attempts at being understanding while he works through his own grief."

"And this gap in your life is to be filled by the disparaging comments of someone who is not even interested in your company?"

"You've been talking a long time for someone who isn't interested in talking to me."

"Yes, well, as you said at the beginning of this visit – I have merely been hostage to your chatter."

"I didn't say that.  Exactly.  And I bought you Vimto."  She glanced over to the bed.  "And a couple of other things."

He tried to turn to look, but his mobility along with the position of his chair prevented him from seeing too much.  Which was as well, Hermione thought, because she suddenly decided that she needed to explain how her plan had come about.

"So then," she said, moving the conversation on before she risked Snape thinking much more about how he didn't actually want her in his hospital room.  "I think I might currently be in possession of your copy of 'Curses and their Counters.'"

He raised both brows at that.  "Might you indeed?"

"It's a bit of a tale, but I need to explain.  Mainly because I was, well, kind of in your old bedroom earlier, and you're definitely going to need the context for that one."

Snape's fingers tightened on the Vimto bottle he still held, but he didn't explode into a fit of pique, which was rather what Hermione had been expecting.

"Explain this incursion," he demanded tightly.

"Okay, well, it started with the panic attack.  We'll gloss over that – oh, unless you want to know about how I managed to put Hagrid in a voiceless full body-bind...?"

~~~

At a little before quarter to seven, the door to Snape's room was opened without a knock.  A Mediwizard strode in who was unfamiliar to Hermione.  He placed a tray on the table, narrowed his eyes at the colourful – and now empty – Vimto bottles, then huffed with what looked like a decision not to even bother asking and exited the room without a single word.

When the door was closed, Hermione looked more closely at the tray.  A deep-sided ceramic bowl took centre stage, similar in shape to her father's microwavable soup cup that he sometimes took with him on a weekend shift.  Steam drifted away from what looked like a thin vegetable broth with a few stray bits of onion and pearls of barley floating in the top.  It did not smell completely unappetising, but 'tempting' or 'tasty' would have been misplaced descriptors.  The surface of the broth was a good third of the way down into the bowl.  Snape could probably pick it up and drink, rather than use the spoon provided, and with minimal risk of an accident.

"As you can see," he said, "I am not yet deemed ready for solids."  His tone was tight.  He was embarrassed.  Given that ten minutes earlier he'd been white of face and growling with indignation at the way she'd plucked his dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door in the Headmaster's Tower, she was hardly going to flinch at this point.  Now was she?

"Maybe if you're good they'll give you some mashed-up banana for pudding," she said blithely.

Snape stared at her a moment, then – to perhaps the astonishment of both of them – he snorted into brief but genuine chuckles.

~~~

A tea tray was delivered when the empty soup bowl had been collected.  The Mediwizard told Hermione that visiting hours were over at seven o'clock before he left.

Snape eyed the tray with a tired sense of resignation.

"Do you think you can pour?" Hermione asked.

"Probably," he said.

"Have you tried?"

"No."

Of course he hadn't.  Even if he could pour a cup of tea, he couldn't lift it to his mouth without sloshing a good portion of the contents over his pristine white medical gown.  And pouring a cup of tea that he didn't subsequently pick up would only tip off the medical staff to his predicament, potentially earning him the humiliation of an attendant levitating his cup for him.  Or one of those child-like covered beakers with a little sippy spout...

Hermione stood up and went to her bag, which remained on the bed in the corner.

"Can I encourage you to try and pour?  I had a thought earlier, but I can't do much about the pouring stage.  If it doesn't work I'll tidy up and they won't be any the wiser."

She retrieved what she needed and went back to the table.  Snape, she noticed, had splashed some milk in the cup first.  This pleased her, since she was one of those people who ascribed to the notion that scorching the milk by adding it to a full and very hot cup of tea was a stupid idea, even if some sections of the upper classes had decided that the etiquette of tea demanded milk to be added last.

He picked up the pot.  His hands shook, but the spout poured true and the wide lip of the teacup gave him a good area to aim at.  He put the pot down and sat back, narrowing his gaze at the tea he had prepared: the tea he could not lift up and drink.

Hermione put down her final gift.

"What is this?"

"A reusable curly drinking straw," she said.

He hesitated.  "Why is it curly?"

"Because my mum bought it for me when I was nine.  It's supposed to be fun.  And quirky."

"Would a straight straw not be more..."

"Dignified?  Not sure.  What does it say about drinking tea through a straw in Emily Post?"

And that was the second time she had made Severus Snape laugh that evening.

"It's curly," she added, "because the straight disposable ones I could have brought along might not do well with the temperature of tea.  This one is robust enough to take the heat.  If you want me to Transfigure it straight for you I will.  But I didn't want to start waving my wand around without you knowing why."

He nodded.  "A sensible precaution."

"Mind you, since there's currently a le Guin story collection on your bedside table that probably needs Transfiguring to look less Muggle, I might as well do it all at once.  If you like I could make the Transfigured spine big enough for you to hide the straw in.  Then you can sit back and watch your Mediwizards tear their hair out, wondering how you're managing to drink your tea without the tiniest spot of spillage."  She sat back and folded her arms.  "Because the more I think about it, the more sure I am that the tea tray thing is deliberate."

"As I mentioned earlier – I taught most of the younger members of staff here.  And Slytherin does not tend to produce numerous members of the healing and nurturing professions."

"Hmm.  Well!  At least that will be entertaining – watching the staff try to work it out."  She looked over at the bed.  "If they barge in on you mid-tea-break, looking for a clue why their tea jape has ended, you should be able to slide the straw up your dressing gown sleeve to hide it.  I've seen how quick and deft you are with your wand.  The straw is almost the same shape.  Then you can practise your unimpressed glower on them until they run away."  She grinned.  "It'll be fun."

Snape sighed.  "I shall endeavour to compose some particularly biting insults and sarcastic remarks for your next visit, since it seems that I am now in your debt."

Hermione stood up.  She knew a good exit line when she saw it.

"One," she said, "you are not in my debt.  Not now; not ever.  Not when I'm alive and free because of you.  Two, feel free to throw in the odd back-handed compliment.  A woman cannot survive on sarcasm alone.  Three – I'm invited back, then, am I?"

"I was under the impression, Miss Granger, that I was being given no choice in the matter."

"Oh, no, no, no.  Let's get this one straight, right now.  The last twenty years have been all about you having no choices.  Well, now you do.  Today I just wanted to bring you some stuff that might make things better for you, here.  Oh, that reminds me – the torch by the bed _should_ refrain from conking out in the proximity of magic.  I seem to remember the lighting globes get very dim from nine pm through to breakfast time.  I thought it might be frustrating, not having any control over the light levels in your room."

He nodded.  "Your assumption is correct."

"Right.  Good.  Keep the stuff I've left here or throw it away.  Up to you.  But if you don't want to see me, ever again?  It's fine.  It's your choice.  Just say now if you'd prefer I leave you alone."

She held her breath, waiting for rejection.  But truly, what else could she do?  At some point things had to work both ways.

Snape looked angrily at her, for the first time since his dressing-gown-related fit of temper.

It took her a moment to realise why.

He didn't want this to be about anything more than a bothersome ex-pupil who had decided to make him her next special project.  Especially not from his own point of view.  Revealing a desire for connection was the kind of thing that might weaken a man: especially a man who had spent so very long navigating a dangerous double-life.

"Have a think about it," Hermione said, saving him from the need to answer.  "Owl me if you want me to steer clear.  Meanwhile, I'm going to do some of that ridiculous wand-waving you have so little time for.  One straight drinking straw and a disguised novel to hide it in – coming right up."

She left the hospital five minutes later, having waved goodbye to a Snape who had reverted to shuttered indifference.  She felt oddly exhausted.

Still.  It wasn't as if she'd ever found the act of making a friend effortless.  And nothing was going to shift her from this idea that Severus Snape was going to be worth it.

~~~


	7. The Mind Boggles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Friendships begin with liking or gratitude – roots that can be pulled up."
> 
> George Eliot  
>  'Daniel Deronda' 1876

Snape didn't owl.

Of course, there was a very good chance that he was being denied access to basic communications while he remained a person of interest to Magical Law Enforcement.  So the absence of a cease-and-desist note was not necessarily a positive sign.

Hermione did not try to seek any further clarification.  She prided herself on being a fast learner, and that angry look at the end of their last meeting had told her that forcing the issue could do no good.  Snape liked to inhabit the grey areas of ambiguity, where at the drop of a circumstance he could steer either way.  Clarity meant commitment, and commitment was the emotional equivalent of backing yourself into a corner.

It occurred to her that perhaps one of the reasons she was finding such solace and such thrill in this potential new connection was because Severus Snape was even more screwed up than she was.

~~~

"I brought coffee," she said, a couple of days later, in the white room that was no longer quite so oppressively white.  "There's an Italian place in Soho that I adore.  It does take-out."

Snape looked levelly at the two paper cups she held.  "You don't say," he deadpanned.

"So.... how do you take yours?"

"Un-frothed.  Unsweetened."  His face twisted, as if struck by the most hideous and horrifying thought.  "Unadorned by _sprinkles_."

She snorted back laughter.  "'You don't _say_ ,'" she quoted back at him, and handed him the triple espresso.  "And here I was, thinking you were Mr. Mocha-with-whipped-cream."

He took the cup without a thank-you.  She pretended not to notice how he watched carefully as she sipped her latte through the hole in the plastic lid.

Snape tried his coffee.  His eyes actually bulged.  Hermione suspected that his experience of coffee was restricted to the bitter, over-roasted mess that the House Elves served – under duress – to those who preferred coffee to tea, and perhaps to the odd jar of nasty instant Nescafe.

He smacked his lips, looked thoughtful, then took another sip.  Yup – coffee of this strength and quality had to be new, gauging this reaction.

"Good?" she asked with a grin.

His eyes narrowed.  "Granger, if you must be tedious _and_ self-satisfied, can I prevail upon you to choose one or the other at any given time?  Both together is an assault on my senses."

Hermione sat down.  "Fine.  Next time I'll remember the biscotti."

~~~

"How are we feeling today?"

Snape shot her his darkest look.  It was, of course, very _very_ dark.  Like the centre of a black hole, sucking matter and light and random pleasantries into pitchy oblivion.

"Use that particular pronoun with that particular question again in my presence," Snape said coldly, "and I shall propel you from this room with such force that the window it currently lacks will no longer be an issue."

She stared at him for a moment, then couldn't help a snicker slip from beneath her attempt at a poker-face.

"I fail to see the humour," Snape griped.

"Yes, well, that's 'cause it's only funny if you were a party to the bet I had with myself out in the corridor."

"What?"

"How long will it take before I'm threatened with violence, if I treat Snape to the most patronising version of 'how are you'?  The one Healers tend to chuck about.  The one with the royal 'we'."

He was silent a moment, then he said, "I trust I met your expectations."

"I thought the threat would materialise quickly.  But I wasn't anticipating being hurled through multiple brick walls.  So in that sense you exceeded them."

He sniffed and looked away.

"Seriously, though," she added, "how are you?"

"Bugger off, Granger," he replied.

~~~

"Seen the Prophet today?"

Snape all but growled.  "I avoid it where I can."

"Oh.  So how come–"

"That particular article was thrust upon me."

She nodded.  "Anyway.  Let's start again.  Seen the Prophet today?"

He looked exasperated.  " _No_."

Hermione refrained from doing a dance of glee, but only just.  "I know!  No one has!"

A pause.  She might not be dancing, but an exuberant chuckle still managed to escape as Snape studied her suspiciously.

"Explain," he demanded.

"Okay.  So we all hate the Prophet.  Skeeter in particular.  And the leverage I had over her for a while got blown out the water when the stupid cow went and bloody registered her animagus form under Thicknesse's amnesty–"

"Stop."  Snape sat forward in his chair.  "Rita Skeeter is an animagus."

"Big blue beetle.  She used the form to spy on people.  I found out.  Fourth year?  Or was it fifth?  During the Triwizard Tournament, anyway.  I threatened to expose her.  Made her stop writing lies about Harry.  Got her to do that report about Voldemort's resurrection."

"That was you?"

"Yes."

"How unexpectedly..."

"Underhand?"

"Competent."

"Thank you.  Anyway, we lost that hold over her, and she's been going mad since the battle, writing all kinds of shit about all kinds of people, as well you know.  And then last week she got wind that me and Ron have gone back to being friends.  Probably 'cause we all risked a visit to Fortescue's when we were helping George move back in to the shop, and we were seen."

"How would that–"

"Since Ron and I concluded the romantic aspect to our relationship," Hermione said primly, "there has been quite a bit less kissing and bottom-squeezing."

Snape cleared his throat.  "I see."

"Anyway, whatever the reason, Skeeter came out with this major so-called scoop, about how the ever-devious Miss Granger – she doesn't like me very much, unsurprisingly, I s'pose – has cast poor, loyal, sweet-natured Ron Weasley aside now that she, quote, 'can use her borrowed celebrity to cast a wider net'."  Hermione grinned.  "What a harpy."

"Indeed."

"And when Harry noticed the article in the window of the Prophet, after he was coming home from the Ministry via Magical Menagerie to get some owl treats, he got quite cross."

"This is becoming a lengthy explanation for why no one has seen the Prophet today."

"You want the short version?  No one bothered buying it.  Because today, everyone bought the Quibbler."

"I had no idea it had gained such a readership."

"It hadn't.  Until Harry took me and Ron to see Luna's dad last week, and we all sat down and gave the Quibbler an exclusive interview with the Golden Trio."  She shot him a glare: admittedly the Walt Disney version, given the standard of glare Snape himself could claim.  "And before you sneer at me, I hate that sodding name too."

Snape looked pensive for a moment.  "A decent tactic," he finally acknowledged.

"Ron's idea.  He's the strategist.  We needed a way to hurt the Prophet.  Best way is to knock their sales."

"Indeed."

"But it gets better.  This morning, after the Quibbler starts flying off the shelves and the Prophet just sits there looking resentful and ignored, Barnabas Cuffe owled Harry.  You know.  The Prophet's editor-in-chief."

"You and I have spoken of your tendency to patronise, Miss Granger.  Refrain."

"Just checking Nagini didn't melt too many brain cells," she retorted.  "So Cuffe gets all, 'How could you hurt us like this, Harry?'  And, 'People deserve to know your story, and the Prophet is still the most widely-read publication in Wizarding Britain.'  And Harry shows me the note from Cuffe, and we sit down and write a response.  And I get an idea."

"Of course you do."

"Shut up.  It's from the Muggle celebrity press.  Things like 'Hello' magazine and other gossip rags.  Celebrities do these deals, when they get married or have babies, or stuff like that.  And there's an exclusive article and photographs, and for a bit one celebrity rag lords it over the others."

"So?"

"So at some point Harry's probably going to marry.  Maybe have kids."

"Merlin help us all."

"Don't be such a meanie.  The point Harry made when he owled Cuffe back is this – at some point Harry will be in a position to offer an exclusive deal to one of Wizarding Britain's publications.  Wedding pictures, and eventually those cute pictures of the doting parents cradling the next generation of Potters while they gaze in awe and adoration at–"

"Continue along this theme and I may vomit, Granger."

"Misanthrope.  And there was me thinking you'd be interested to learn that Harry has forced the Daily Prophet into best-behaviour mode."

"This plan _worked_?" he asked incredulously.

"Yup.  Cuffe has agreed that some of the articles written about people close to Harry might have played a little fast and loose with the facts."

"That is the case for every article that rag has ever published."

"Probably.  Never read the thing myself.  Harry was careful though.  He told Cuffe that he was by no means in favour of censoring the press, and that any proper reporting of facts that were of genuine public interest remained entirely the remit of the paper."

"I do not believe for a second that Potter placed those words together in a sentence."

"Yeah, okay, I dictated it for him.  And after we sent the note, Cuffe owled back to say that he apologises for those articles that _escaped_ his oversight."  She arched a brow at Snape.  "Of course, he's a very busy man and cannot fact-check everything his reporters submit.  But he agreed that any pieces to do with, quote, 'figures central to the recent successful war against darkness and bigotry' will, in future, be properly scrutinised."

"I see."

"And Harry wrote back to say he looks forward to monitoring the improvement in the Prophet's standard of reporting before he makes any future decisions regarding access to the big moments in his life."

"Potter does not strike me as someone who will embrace the celebrity photo-shoot, for all his ego."

"He isn't.  But Cuffe doesn't need to know that Harry is never going to invite strangers to take pictures of him and his family for public consumption."  She frowned.  "And, by the way, Harry is not remotely egotistical.  His big problem is that he lacks a sense of self-worth."  She gave him a piercing look.  "It's what happens when children are abused or neglected during early childhood–"

"Granger–"

She lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender.  "Talking about Harry!"

Snape sighed.  "Well.  We shall see how long this _detente_ lasts."

Hermione nodded and finally got to shrug her jacket off and hang it on the back of the door.

After she'd sat down and spread out the Boggle grid, dice and sand-timer – because in the Muggle world, Boggle remained a fun word game that she had adored since she was four, rather than a famous Boggart from Kent – she timed her final word on the subject of the Daily Prophet carefully.

"Oh, and Rita Skeeter has been moved to 'Arts and Warts'."

"Hmm?"

"Yup.  Apparently she's down to attend 'Urg the Unclean and other Heroes' tonight.  You know.  It's being staged by the all Goblin am-dram society out of the Little Norton Church Hall."  She randomised the Boggle letters by shaking the covered tray.  "Personally I can't _wait_ to read about her impressions of a four hour Gobbledegook theatrical spectacular."

She uncovered the tray and set the timer going.  They both studied the grid of letters.

"Comeuppance," Snape said after a moment.

"There's only one 'p'."

"Is there?"

They looked across the table at each other, and one smirk matched the other.

~~~

At Grimmauld Place, over a large casserole that Harry had painstakingly prepared without a single cooking charm – he had never mastered domestic magic in the same way that he'd mastered duelling – Hermione stared at the blank sheet of paper on top of the pad she had set down beside her bowl.

"Are you going to eat tonight?" Ron asked with his mouth full.

"In a minute."  She looked at the title she had written.  _'Plan to make Mum and Dad feel better about what happened.'_   "I just want one bullet point.  Just a starter."  She sat with pen poised, held her breath, thought hard...then she growled and threw the pen down on the pad.  "Bollocks!  _One_ bloody thing – is that too much to ask?"

"Take them a present?" Harry suggested, tearing apart one of the granary rolls he'd bought from Sainsburys; bread-making was beyond his skills, for the moment.

"Bribery?  Doesn't sound emotionally honest."

"Right now the last thing you need is emotional honesty," Ron pointed out.

"True enough," she agreed.  "I mean, your dad was probably right – this comes down to their sense of letting me down, as much as it's about my sense of having betrayed them.  If I tell them the truth?  How I feel awful about what I had to do?  All that'll do is make _their_ guilt ramp up.  Because they still think it's their fault I was forced to do it."

"Eat," Ron said firmly, waving his spoon at her.  "Bread.  Lots of butter.  Tasty casserole."  He widened his eyes at her when she met his gaze.  " _Or_ I'll tell Mum you're still too thin."

"Git."

"Strategist," he corrected, smirking as she lifted her knife and buttered some bread.

Silence, but for the clink of cutlery against crockery.

Then Ron said, "Of course, if the core of the problem is what your parents couldn't do?  They couldn't protect themselves, they couldn't protect you?  Best thing is to show them something they _can_ do.  Ask them for some help in something.  Let them start feeling useful again.  All, you know, parent-y."

Hermione, chewing a nicely tender bit of slow-cooked beef, thought about this.

"Ron," she said when she'd swallowed her mouthful.

"Mmph?"

"You are a total fucking genius."

"Am I?  Yes!  I am.  Also – really handsome."

"Shut up."

Harry snorted.  Hermione grabbed her pen and began to write.

And write.

And write.

"I'll put this in the oven to keep warm," a voice said at her shoulder.

"Thanks," she said automatically, though she'd barely heard the comment.

~~~

"You've eaten your grapes," Hermione noted.

"I can account for nine of them," Snape informed her.

It took her a moment to realise what was being implied.  She glanced towards the table where Snape sat in his customary position, his back to the bed and the bedside table.  Then she returned her gaze to the tangle of twigs and stalks that had once held a bunch of sweet seedless grapes in a Marks and Spencer polythene bag.

There'd been way more than nine of the bloody things in that bunch.

"Thieving little shits," Hermione muttered.

He didn't reply.  It hardly needed further acknowledgement.

~~~

"I brought purple ones this time," she said, the next day.  She summoned the grapes from the confines of her bag.

Snape grunted, which Hermione interpreted as a sign that he was in one of his better moods.  He'd have been well within his rights, after all, to demand what the hell the point was to a delivery of fruit that he wouldn't even get to eat.

"I'm about to cast," she added, slipping her wand from her sleeve.

This made him arch a questioning brow at her.

The charm was one she'd devised from the anti-theft charm commonly imposed on items for sale in magical shops.  She'd embellished it a bit, though.

"Can I borrow your hand?" she asked.

A moment of hesitation.

"That depends entirely on what you want it for, and the state in which it will be returned," he decided.

"I want it so I can tell these grapes who's boss.  And it will be returned in exactly the condition it is proffered."

He still hesitated.  Hermione thought she knew why.  After a handful of visits and a connection that was growing...if not _comfortable_ , then at least more familiar, she and Severus Snape had not touched each other on a single occasion.

"Is this absolutely necessary?" he asked.

"If I cast this simple charm, then the next time one of the medical staff tries to pinch a grape behind your back, that grape is going to scream, 'Hands off!  Help!  Stop, thief!'"

"Ah."

"It will also develop prickles, because I layered a temporary Transfiguration into the charm.  Don't worry.  It only lasts half a second.  And if you lend me your hand while I cast the thing then the grapes will always just be grapes when _you_ touch them."

Snape considered this a moment.  "It is worth it," he decided, and held out his hand to her.

His skin was cold, perhaps because his circulation was still recovering along with his nervous system, or perhaps because he had lived a sedentary life during the weeks in St. Mungo's.  Hermione forced herself not to react, not to flinch, not to even pause and look at Snape's face just to see if he was reacting to her in any particular way.  She drew his fingers to the grapes she had set on the table, kept her hand wrapped around his, and with her wand-arm she prepared to cast.

A moment to make sure she had the thing straight in her head, then she performed the charm with a brief incantation and a sophisticated but efficient wand pattern.

She let go.  Snape didn't snatch his hand back, but he did not linger either.

"I await proof of the charm's success with some degree of anticipation," Snape said.

"Don't have to.  I already know it works.  I developed it for my stuff, when I was camping.  Teenage boys get bored.  And hormonal.  And they're not good at boundaries."

Snape looked at her.  "Never, ever tell me about those items that required protection."

Hermione smirked.  "Looks like I pretty much don't have to."  She stood straight.  "But if you really want proof the charm works?"  She leaned forward and tried to pick a grape.

"Stop, thief!  Help!  Get your filthy hands off me!" said the bunch of grapes.

Hermione pulled her hand back and shook the tiny pain of the prickle away.  "There," she said.  "Now you try."

Snape arched a brow – more than a mere micro-twitch these days – and leaned to take a grape.  The grape behaved as a grape should.  He popped it in his mouth and chewed slowly.

"These are nicer than the little green ones," he said.

"I was pushed for time, last week.  This time I went to the farm shop at the garden centre I like in Sutton."

He nodded, then looked curious.  "Why did you not include yourself in the charm's parameters?"

Hermione frowned at him.  "Because they're yours, you daft apath!  You don't buy someone a gift and then claim full access to that gift yourself."

He blinked at her.  Then he leaned forward and plucked another grape from the bunch.  "I take it this has detached the grape from the charm?"

"Yes.  It only works when it's on the bunch."

"Good.  Have one yourself," he said, and tossed it her way.

She was ridiculously proud of the way she managed not to fumble her catch.

~~~

"Do you know where I can buy a cursed knife?" she asked Snape.

He lifted his eyes from the coffee she had taken to bringing him with every visit.  "Yes," he said slowly.

"Oh.  Good.  Where?"

His eyebrow lifted.  A full lift, not a twitch, not a semi-arch.  The proper Snape raised brow.

And he waited.

"Tell me or don't," she grumbled.  "You can't actually give me detention any more, you know."

"I will not direct you to the seedier establishments of Knockturn Alley without good reason," he said.

"I need to practise.  That's all."

"You wish to practise injuring people with a cursed blade."  His voice was without inflection.  He never gave anything away until he knew what was happening.

"Of course I don't, you maniac!" she replied.  "But cursed blades will cause irreparable damage to anything.  Even things that aren't living creatures."  She sighed.  "If you must know, I want to slice open a cushion with a cursed blade and then practise the counter-curse from Fotheringhay on it."

He nodded slowly.  "You've read the book."

"Four times.  Some of the wand-work is elaborate.  I think I've got it straight, but it's going to be tricky directing the counter-curse at my own collarbone, even if I'm confident in casting it.  Trying it out on something safe first makes sense."

Snape looked like he was thinking something over.  Then he said, "You would refuse, I take it?  If I offered my own injury for this purpose?"

Hermione startled.  Then she considered the bandages around Snape's neck that had simply become a part of him over recent weeks.  She'd stopped seeing them.  She'd stopped noticing the pinkness of the inflamed skin at their edges.  She'd stopped worrying over the slight shadow at their centre, hinting at the darkness beneath.

"Nagini's mouth acted like a cursed blade," she deduced.  "It wasn't just the venom."

"The venom did not help at all," he said dryly.  "But the snake's fangs were as riddled with dark magic as the rest of it."

"But Arthur Weasley–"

"I healed Arthur's bite using Fotheringhay, after he'd received the antivenin."

"That's how you knew it would work for me," Hermione guessed.

"I'd used it before.  I was reasonably sure."

"And you knew you needed it too."

He sighed.  "Yes."

"Why didn't you tell your Healer?"

"I suggested it.  But referring to a book like Fotheringhay and Deane–"

"...makes them laugh in your face.  Right."  She tut-tutted and shook her head.  "So you get a shoddy make-do-and-mend sew up twice a week like I do, then?  The standard injury-closing charm that lasts four days before the tear begins to itch and sting and pull open, all over again?"

"I get mine every two days," he said.

"Ah.  Well, makes sense.  You're a lot more important than me.  And better at complaining."

"You did not answer my question."

"Would I practise on you?  Of course not.  Not till I'm confident.  But if it makes you happy, as soon as I _am_ confident I'd try it on you before I try me.  At least I wouldn't have to reverse the direction of the wand's pattern."

Snape nodded.  "Don't go to Borgin and Burke, or anywhere similar.  You will be seen, you will be swindled, and you will be the subject of a Rita Skeeter article regarding your fall from grace within half a day, never mind her current role as arts correspondent."

"Yeah.  Figured," she grumped.

"Curse your own knife.  It's easy to do if you only want the curse to be temporary."

She arched a brow.  "Is it?"

"You've cast plenty of jinxes and hexes in your time.  Some of them remarkably creative.  A curse is just the same, except more so."

"I was so totally hoping you'd say that."  Hermione went to the hook on the back of the door, where she tended to hang her jacket.  She reached into the pocket and pulled out the Stanley knife she'd taken from the garage at her parents' house.  She pushed up the blade and then set it down on the table.  "Show me how," she demanded.

A pause.  Snape considered the knife.

She waited.

"Sometimes, Granger, I almost like you," Snape said.

"I'll take almost.  Come on.  Teach me some nasty scary magic.  And don't forget your mellifluous baritone."

"Silence.  Hand me your wand.  And watch carefully."

She handed him her wand.  Both of them hesitated, looked at each other, acknowledged the trust inherent in this action.

Forty minutes later, as she left the hospital room, Snape's pillow was back on his bed, as pristine as when she had arrived.  But there were a few fluffy feathers of down lying underneath the table: evidence of the success of the afternoon's exercise.

~~~

"You were at the hospital again today," Harry said, after the waiter had delivered the poppadoms and the spinning chutney tray.

Hermione knew she'd blush if she denied it.  She also knew that Ron, sitting beside her, was paying careful attention to how she might respond.

"Yup," she agreed, and spun the chutneys so she could avoid the insanely hot lime pickle and access the mango chutney and the raita.  Funny, how her appetite was returning.  Eating was becoming less a chore, more a pleasure.  "I'm there twice a week.  Otherwise my clavicle unpeels."

"That's not all you do, though, is it?"

"You want an update?  Madam Pomfrey has returned to Hogwarts, now the structural damage has been repaired in the infirmary.  They've finally discharged Terry Boot.  It turned out that the Cruciatus the Carrows did through that last term was the problem.  Something about the damage to his nervous system preventing the standard Fiendfyre regeneration treatment from working as well."

"Hermione," Harry said firmly, trying to sound stern.  She almost laughed in his face.  Compared to the company she had taken to keeping, Harry's attempt at authority was hilarious.

She sighed instead, because laughing would have been rude.  "He's fine, Harry.  He's getting better.  The pain is getting less.  He's managing to eat, though his digestive system is doing the usual complaining as it switches from a diet of broth to something more substantial."

"Ew," said Ron.  "You discuss his digestive system?"

"Almost everything I discuss with Severus Snape happens through layers of ambiguity," she said.  "He is probably the least direct person I have ever known."  She frowned.  "Apart from his insults.  Those are quite direct."

"He insults you?" Ron demanded angrily.

"Of course he does.  It's _Snape_."

"So why–"

"And you might be interested to know, Harry, that I have finally persuaded him to talk to you."

Harry exploded into paroxysms of joy, as Hermione had known he would.  In fact, Snape had agreed to a meeting a few days ago, but she'd been saving the information for when she needed it.  Probably as a distraction, at that inevitable moment when her two closest friends noticed that her visits to the greasy bat from the dungeons had become habitual, and that she tended to return from them with a spring to her step and a smile on her face.

"Brilliant, Hermione," Harry was saying.  "Just, brilliant!  You are completely brilliant, you know that?"

Ron wasn't quite so swept away.  Indeed, he was watching Hermione with a hint of suspicion.  He was, after all, the one person present who might recognise conversational strategy when it happened.

"Don't get carried away," she told Harry.  "There's guidelines."

"Anything!"

"First of all, he agreed to meet with you only because I persuaded him that it made sense.  His trial is scheduled for next month, and even though you keep telling me it'll only be a formality at this point, it's still sensible that he is up to speed with the whole investigation.  I told him that you're so much a part of it that you have to be involved."

"You're brilliant," Harry repeated.

"Secondly, Kingsley Shacklebolt will have to be there too."

Harry's face fell, then he squared his shoulders.  "That's okay.  I don't have secrets from Kingsley."

"Thirdly, certain topics are entirely off-limit."

Harry frowned.  "What topics?"

"Your mum, your dad, Sirius Black.  Especially any history that Snape has with those people."

Harry did an impression of a goldfish in a bowl for a while, opening and closing his mouth, staring blankly at her.  Then he slammed his open palm down on the white tablecloth and demanded, "How is that going to help, then?  Those are the only things worth talking about!"

"Only so far as _you_ are concerned.  I rather think Shacklebolt is more concerned with the things Snape did and did not do during the rise of Voldemort."

"But–"

"Harry, it's the part of his life that hurts him the most.  I know you're desperate to learn more about your parents, especially from someone who cared so deeply for your mum.  But forcing Snape to do it?  It'd be like...like sticking a knife in his side and then twisting and wrenching it with every word you say.  Is that worth it?"

Harry looked torn.

Ron said, "Actually, I'd be okay with that."

Hermione ignored Ron and reached across the table to hold Harry's hand.  "Listen to me.  Snape's strong preference is to never have to set eyes on you again.  We've been over why it is he feels that way.  I've managed to persuade him that in order for his trial to proceed fairly and equitably, he needs to meet with the people who are organising the evidence.  And that involves you.  He's accepted that.  All you can do now is take this opportunity to show him that you've grown up.  You're older, wiser.  You aren't the same boy he's been protecting all these years."

"Protecting!" Ron scoffed.

"Yes!  Protecting, when Quirrell tried to murder him.  Or when we came face to face with a werewolf – the same werewolf Sirius Black once tried to use to slaughter Snape – and he overcame his terror and his revulsion and threw himself _between_ us and the monster–"

"That wasn't all of how it happened," Harry muttered.

"Of course it wasn't.  But it was Snape's perspective.  That's what you need to do, Harry.  You need to try to see things through _his_ eyes.  Just a bit."

He looked wildly at her for a moment, then he hung his head and toyed with the fork lying next to his plate.  "I know," he said.  "I've been thinking about it.  Since we talked, that night at the house.  And I know you're right."  He sighed.  "It's just so hard.  There's this massive great big crater-shaped hole in my life where most people have the image of their parents.  The people that made them.  The people who love them better than anyone else on the planet.  And every time I think about – I mean, I just want to _know_.  So badly.  What they were like.  What kind of human beings."  He looked up at Hermione, big earnest green eyes framed by those familiar spectacles.  "And apart from Snape, there's pretty much no one left who can tell me anything."

She nodded.  "Then you need to go slowly.  You need to be subtle."

Ron huffed and said, "You're getting some of that slimy bastard's Slytherin on you, 'Mione."

"How?" Harry asked.

"Like I said, show him you're older.  Wiser.  Calmer.  More thoughtful.  Show him you're the man who saved the world thanks to the chance Snape and Dumbledore engineered.  Respect his boundaries.  Accept that if those boundaries are ever relaxed, it will be Snape who decides."  Hermione shook her head.  "He hasn't had any control over anything.  Virtually all of his life.  At least give him that much now."

"Do you think he'll change his mind?"

"I don't know.  I've met him a handful of times since the battle, and it isn't as if we have heart-to-hearts.  I bring him a hospital-visit type of gift.  He insults me.  That's about it, really.  All I have to go on are the tiniest clues.  And the fact that I think about stuff far too much."

"So why should I bother, then?"

"Because it's this or nothing.  You can choose not to bother with him at all, if that's what you prefer."

"I prefer that," Ron said, holding up his hand like he was in class again.

Harry said, "All right, Ron, we know your feelings on this–"

"He cut my brother's ear off!"

"He was trying to save George's life!" Harry argued.

"Well, then he fucked it up royally, didn't he?"

Hermione glanced around the half-empty restaurant, then leaned over the table.  "Enough, you two.  Agree to disagree."

Harry sighed.  "Tell Snape I accept his terms.  I still want the meeting."

Hermione nodded.

"You're going back there?" Ron asked her.  "What are you, now, his personal secretary?"

"I'm the only person who's been to see him more than once, since he came out of the coma."  Hermione looked down at her hands to see the poppadom on her plate reduced to a thousand tiny crumbs.  She hadn't realised she'd done that.  She sat back.  "Everyone else who visited?  They said their piece, finished it with a big conversational full stop, then they left.  Drew the line.  Even Minerva McGonagall – though admittedly that was more because she was annoyed when Snape refused to go back to Hogwarts."

"So no one wants to spend time with him.  Big surprise."  Ron rolled his eyes and snorted, to underline the irony in his remark.  After weeks of the subtleties of genuine sarcasm, Ron's attempt felt like a car horn blasted into her ears.  "I just don't get why you aren't showing the same common sense as the rest of his visitors.  I mean, you're supposed to be the brightest witch of your age."

Hermione didn't know how to answer that.  Fortunately Harry did it for her.

"She's not only fiendishly clever, Ron," he said.  "She's also kind and generous and tolerant and forgiving and all the things you and me should try harder to be.  Snape's a hero.  _And_ he's a vicious tosspot."  He glanced at Hermione.  "I'm not an idiot, all right?  I know it isn't simple."  He looked back to Ron.  "But whether or not you give a shit about Snape, please tell me you still care about Hermione."

"Of course I do!"

"Because since she started visiting Snape in hospital, she's sleeping better and eating better, and in case you stopped looking too close when you and she decided to go back to just being friends – she _looks_ a lot better."

"I do?" Hermione said, surprised.

"You do," Harry nodded.

Ron took a moment to scrutinise her face, then he looked down at his poppadom.  "Fair point, well made," he conceded to Harry.

"I'm sitting right here, you know, you two!"

Ron smiled.  "Just – for the record?  His insults get too much, or he takes advantage of your kindness and all that stuff Harry said?  You tell me.  And I _will_ murder him in his sleep."

"Yes.  Well, that's definitely what I'll do, then."

Ron nodded.  Harry grinned.  Hermione considered that, for a Gryffindor, she was much better at sarcasm than most.

She looked hopefully at the waiter, who immediately came over to the table.  "May I have another poppadom, please?" she asked, eyeing the empty central plate and Ron's unapologetic smirk as he piled chutney high on the last one he'd swiped.  "I appear to have broken this one."

~~~

"I've been thinking," she said, the next time she stepped through the door of the white room.

"You mean there are occasions when you stop?"

"Yes.  I stop thinking when you stop glowering."

He glowered.  Hermione snuffled a laugh.

"So I've been thinking."

"You said."

"About your injury."

"I will not pressure you to attempt the counter-curse before you are ready."

"Oh, I know that.  You're a bastard, but you're an utterly fair-minded bastard."

"Thank you."

"No, what I've been thinking...your trial isn't too far away now."

"I am aware."

"So I was wondering whether we ought to leave the injury in place.  You know?  So there's this visual reminder, right there in front of the Wizengamot on their big ponsy podium.  Bloke who saved the world and got his throat torn out.  And see!  There's the evidence."  Hermione looked at Snape expectantly.

"You wish to manipulate the feelings of the highest court in Wizarding Britain."

"Course I do.  If it'll remind them about the proper way to proceed."

Snape studied her a moment, then looked away.  "I do not care sufficiently about the outcome of my trial to have any strong preference, either way.  Do as you see fit."

"Okay.  But for the record – the minute the Wizengamot clear you of all the charges that should have been dropped by now anyway?  I'll be right there ready to do the counter-curse."

"As you wish."

She frowned.  This was kind of more about what Snape wished, wasn't it?  Of course, she'd learned weeks ago that he didn't do well when forced into _expressing_ his wishes.

"How are we going to play it with the Healers?" she asked, as she set the coffees on the table.  "I mean, a magically disappearing injury is less of a thing in the magical world, obviously, but it'll still be weird, won't it?  Both of us spending weeks and weeks having the same treatment to keep a cursed injury from deteriorating, then suddenly – all is well?"

Snape looked at her over the rim of his espresso.  "I've been healing cursed injuries with a combination of counter-curses such as Fotheringhay's for almost twenty years in Hogwarts infirmary.  You'd be astonished at the dangerous experiments students will attempt...though considering to whom I am speaking..."

"Wasn't always self-inflicted, my various and sundry 'dangers'," Hermione said with a sniff.

"Perhaps not always.  In any case, every time I healed an injury that Poppy Pomfrey was barely keeping under control, I simply told her that the standard healing charms had finally taken."

"And she believed that?"

"She did not disbelieve.  And her desire to see her patients well again exceeded her desire to forensically examine my own methods."

"I see."  She sipped her latte.  "So you're okay with waiting, then?  Everything else besides, if your injury vanishes and your Healer here isn't as accepting as Madam Pomfrey, then you might end up with Magical Law Enforcement investigating your recovery."

"Hmm.  Possible.  And given my current lack of a wand, and the fact that _you_ continue to perpetuate this myth that I am happy to accommodate your regular visits–"

"Yeah, yeah."

"You are the only person stubborn enough to keep coming back," he said sharply.  "You would certainly be under suspicion too."

"For helping someone with an injury?  Goodness.  I _am_ dastardly, aren't I?"

"Fiendish," Snape agreed mildly.  "But in these turbulent post-war times, when most of the Wizarding World believes I am a Death Eater and a murderer, any assistance you render me will reflect badly upon you."

"Wish you'd told me that before I brought you grapes."

"You have known this all along."

"Yes, I have.  Another thing I've known?  That you're wrong.  There are few people in Wizarding Britain who still think you're a murderer.  I mean, lots of them think you're a big git who made their school years hell.  But between Harry and Shacklebolt, and Dumbledore's evidence, and other heroes of the battle like Neville – you know it was Neville who destroyed Nagini, right?"

"I had heard.  I assume he tripped over something and fell on the snake while carrying the sword over to someone who might actually use it."

"He was amazing.  And so was Molly, who took down Bellatrix.  All these people are heroes, and all of them believe we couldn't have won without the sacrifices you made.  So frankly, Snape, I'm taking much less of a risk, being here, than you seem to think."

He shrugged and finished his coffee.  "Again, I do not care sufficiently either way for it to matter."

Hermione sipped.  "Liar," she muttered.

"Granger?"

"Nothing.  Nothing at all."

But she knew he'd heard.

~~~

Snape stood still beside the bed.  His dressing gown fell in a sweep of black that was so reminiscent of his teaching robes that he might as well have been fully dressed.

His shoulders moved with a drawn breath.

"Wingardium leviosa," he intoned, wandless, with a tiny flick of his fingers.

The pillow on the bed lifted by a few inches, hovered for a moment, then fell back.  Snape dropped his arm and tried to disguise the way he was breathing heavily.  His hands no longer shook as badly, but the tremors which still affected him could only hamper the spell's efficacy.  Of course, if Kingsley Shacklebolt had not confiscated Snape's wand while Snape had been comatose, the whole process would have been much easier.

Even so, to be able to cast a simple spell like levitation without his wand demonstrated how Snape's magic was returning.  He turned his head and glanced at her.

"Brilliant," she said, beaming.

"Pathetic," he returned.

"Oh, honestly.  Professor Doldrums, is it, today?"  A sly thought occurred.  "You know, usually when people are being self-deprecating, they're looking for reinforcement.  Or a hug.  Do you want a hug, Snape?"  She held her arms open invitingly, and tried not to dwell on the sudden acceleration of her heart rate.

His mouth opened.  Then it shut.  Then he snorted, as if she'd made a stupid joke, and went back to his seat by the table.

"Tell anyone of my progress and I shall make casting a wandless sardine hex my next order of business," he said.

She smirked.  But she was just a little bit disappointed too.

~~~

"How was your meeting with Harry and Shacklebolt?"

"Minimally productive."

"Better than unproductive."

"Hmm."

"Harry said you offered some helpful info on Malfoy."

"I offered information.  Its helpfulness is not something I can speak to."

"Well thanks, anyway.  Harry's been tearing his hair out, trying to work out whether Malfoy saved you because it was good for you or good for him."

Snape snorted.  "Honestly, Granger.  When was the last time you did something for a single reason?"

She nodded.  She'd learned that, with Snape at least, she didn't need to exhaust conversations.  Rather than acknowledging his point she said, "Can I ask you something about Malfoy?"

"You can ask," he said.  He left the rest of the comment as implicit: _'I might not answer.'_

She drew a deep breath and prepared to inflict some unpleasant memories on herself.  "Would he have been able to stop Bellatrix?  If he'd wanted to?"

Snape looked up.  He seemed surprised, as if he'd been expecting another question.  "He was there?"

"Leaning in the doorway, watching her get started.  Then he buggered off.  Maybe he had more important things to do than watch his sister-in-law torture a helpless young woman."  She shrugged a shoulder, hoping that it disguised the way she needed to pause and swallow hard.  "Sorting out his sock drawer or something."

Snape paused for a while, thinking.  "Malfoy does not recognise Muggle-borns as worthy of concern.  His bigotry on this issue is entirely genuine."

"So he might as well have been watching an animal get hurt."

"Oh, no.  Lucius likes animals.  Cruelty towards them would concern him."

"But not human beings?"

"His values are his own."

"His values are reprehensible."

"Just so.  But he is as much a product of his upbringing as Draco.  Do you begrudge Draco his pardon?"

She frowned.  "No.  But Lucius Malfoy has had nearly thirty years of adulthood to work through  his childhood brainwashing.  Draco hasn't had that yet, and he still had doubts and misgivings about the whole Voldemort and pureblood thing."

"Indeed.  Draco has been struggling with the expectations of his father for longer than the time you have known him."

"I get that."  She grimaced.  "He's still capable of serious shittiness."

Snape tilted his head.  "Aren't we all?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"Could Lucius have stopped her?"  He nodded slowly.  "There were things he might have done to postpone what happened to you, at the very least.  Chief among which would be to alert Bellatrix to the fact that Voldemort himself would likely want access to your mind.  Preferably while it remained intact."

Had Malfoy done that?  She couldn't remember.  She only remembered the panic and the pain.  She could only assume he hadn't bothered.  "So why didn't he try that?"

"I have told you.  Your situation was not of sufficient concern for him to go up against Bellatrix at her most viciously psychotic.  The potential reward was outweighed by the potential harm.  Bellatrix might have accused him of disloyalty.  A Muggle-born like you was certainly not important enough to risk such an accusation."

She shuddered.  She didn't know how someone could live their life steeped in such specific prejudices towards their fellow man, even though – of course – the whole world was littered with examples of such things.

She was quiet for a moment before she asked, "Do you feel friendship for him?"

He looked away.  Frowned.  Hermione suspected she had finally reached the question Snape had expected.

"This conversation rapidly becomes too personal, Miss Granger."

"So tell me you won't answer me and kick me out, then, _Mr_. Snape."

He sighed, glared at her, muttered, "Pigheaded harridan."  Then he said, "When I started at Hogwarts, it was Lucius Malfoy's patronage that ensured my safety in Slytherin.  Even after he'd left the school, his patronage continued.  He recognised in me something that was worth nurturing.  Something worth keeping close."

"He was nice to you because he thought he could use you.  And you felt loyalty."

Snape nodded, unconcerned by this bald summary.  "He showed me support and respect.  It was a novelty.  It was...beguiling."

Hermione nodded to herself.  "Do you want Malfoy pardoned?"

"I do.  And I do not.  Fortunately I am not the person required to make that decision."

Silence, for long enough that the silence grew uncomfortable.

"I wish I'd been at school when you were," Hermione said suddenly.

"Why?"

"Are you kidding me?  I've seen the writings of the Half-Blood Prince.  I'd have bagsied you as Potions partner before anyone else even dreamed of getting their hands on you."

"Ah.  You'd have been pleasant because you saw a way of using me."

Her, and Lucius Malfoy.  The exploiters of Snape.  Now _there_ was a parallel she didn't want to recognise.

She felt a flash of unexpected fury.

"That's how things go at Hogwarts, isn't it?  Maybe in the Muggle world too – my experience is limited."  She stood up, trembling.  It was the first time she'd felt really angry in his presence.  "It's all about the transactions, isn't it?  I should know!  My two best friends – the other two members of the stupidly named Golden Trio – the two people on this planet who are most like extra family to me?  They became my friends because of just the same kind of quid pro quo.  There was nothing natural, nothing based on mutual liking, human being to human being.  No connection.  No common ground."  She brushed a hand over her hair before it began to crackle.  "Those first days in first year?  I tried so _hard_ to prove I had a right to be there.  And everyone hated me for it.  The swot.  The outsider.  The little suck-up to the teachers.  And Ron hated me more than anyone, and said so, loud and sneering, right where I could hear it.  And it got too much and I had to find somewhere to hide.  Somewhere to cry.  Because I don't like getting my emotions out in public.  I don't trust people with them."

Snape was looking at her.  For a man who had made an art form of failing to show reactions, he seemed taken aback.

"So I hid, and I cried, and then a massive fucking troll shows up.  And Harry and Ron arrive, and between us we sort it out, which was just as well, but then I had to lie to Professor McGonagall to get the boys off the hook.  And that?  _That_ is the moment when they decided I was worthy of friendship."

"Granger–"

"And I love those two idiots like they're the brothers I never had.  Well, Harry, anyway.  Ron, it got a bit more problematic and hormonal for a while, but it's fine now.  And I tell myself that seven years together, everything we've been through – I tell myself that it all means so much more than a shitty comment made by Ron when he was eleven, just 'cause he was humiliated because I could do a spell he couldn't.  But right at the back of my head is this tiny little suspicion that me and Harry and Ron would _never_ have been friends if I hadn't taken the blame for them being out of the dorm after hours.  They just felt like they owed me, so they included me, and after a bit when they realised I had my uses, they kept me around."

Infuriatingly, Hermione noticed that the white-ish room had become blurred.  She swiped at her eyes and turned her back on Snape, trying to pull herself together.

"You cannot possibly believe that your friendship with Potter and Weasley is not genuine."

"Why not?  When you look at it logically–"

"How else can I look at it?" Snape demanded.  "I was fooled into believing that I had a friend, once.  Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't – either way, it ended badly.  Since that time the word 'friend' has been irrelevant to me.  There are those people for whom I feel contempt.  There are those whom I merely disdain.  And there are those people to whom I am entirely indifferent.  So if I make a comment on your friendships, Granger, believe me when I say I do so from the _ultimate_ position of logic and objectivity."

She turned back at the harshness in his tone.  She sniffed.

"If we'd been at school together," she said, "I'd have wanted you as a Potions partner.  And I'd have wanted you as a friend, because you're sharp and funny and clever and loyal, and when I look at you I think maybe I'm not the only person in the world who's spent most of their life ostracised."  She swallowed.  "And that's the truth.  I only didn't say it before because I thought you'd sneer in my face."

Their gazes held.  For a moment, the furrow at the centre of Snape's brow creased hard, and his eyes grew dark and deep.  He looked like a man feeling profound emotional pain.

Then his expression shuttered, and he leaned back, and he said, "You'd have been right, Miss Granger.  You and I have infinitely less in common than you seem to think.  Please close the door quietly behind you when you leave."

She went cold.

She'd pushed too hard, and she hadn't even meant to.  It had just happened.  But having her own motivations compared to those of Lucius Malfoy: it had been too outrageous.

"That's it?" she asked.  "We're done here?"

"I may be trapped inside this hospital room," he drawled at her, "but that does not mean I can be used as a drop-in counselling service for overtly emotional teenagers."

Ouch.

"You bastard," she whispered.

"Obviously," he said quietly.  "Did you think you could change me?  _Save_ me?  With your gifts and gestures and all that cloying Gryffindor ingenuousness?"

"I thought I could make a really shitty time in hospital a bit better for you."

"Then you failed.  Goodbye, Miss Granger."

"Right.  Well, then.  I guess I'll see you in court," she said sadly.

"Your choices are your own."

"Not any more, it seems."  She rubbed away another treacherous tear.  "Goodbye Severus."

She left the room.

~~~

"So that's it?" Harry asked later, as they shared a pot of tea down in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place.

"Looks like.  I think I was getting under his skin a bit.  Or maybe I'm overestimating the effect I had.  Maybe he was only ever tolerating my company.  Maybe he was glad I finally gave him an excuse to fuck me off."

"Or maybe he's twisted and damaged and scared and resentful and too busy lashing out to realise that sometimes the good things in his life need a bit of work."

"Maybe he's that.  If he is, then I'm probably best out of it, though, right?"

Harry looked at her.  "You don't believe that."

"Not really."

He sighed in sympathy.  "And do you really need me to tell you how glad I am that, back in first year, between Ron's ability to engage mouth without brain and Quirrell's troll, we worked out what a fantastic human being you are?  The best friend anyone could ask for."

"Right now?  I really do."

Harry shuffled his chair around the corner of the big wooden table and put an arm round her shoulders.  Hermione had done her crying in private, up in her room, but she allowed herself the indulgence of resting her head and feeling miserable.

"You're the tops, Hermione," Harry said.  "I wouldn't have made it this far without you.  If me and Ron were stupid about the way our friendship started, that's our problem and not yours.  I'm just grateful beyond belief that things worked out like they did."

She smiled tiredly.  "Idiot."

"Yeah, but, like a best friend type idiot, right?"

"Right."

Quiet for a while.

"He's totally wrong for you, you know," Harry murmured.  "Severus Snape."

She froze.  Not even her own brain had dared offer such thoughts.  Not yet.

"And at the same time," he added in the same tone, "he's probably a perfect fit."

~~~


	8. One of those Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery."
> 
> Dante Alighieri  
>  'Divina Commedia - Inferno'

"I don't like you going on your own," Harry said.  "Not when you're still...you know."

"I'm still what?" she asked, eyes flashing at him as she packed her bag.

He took a moment and then said, "Not at your amazing Hermione-Granger best."

She stuffed her folder of schools-information into the bag and then leaned over it, shoulders moving like she'd been running.  "Nicely put," she conceded.

"Well, you _have_ been telling me to be older and wiser and more thoughtful."

"True enough."

And while Harry was piling on the maturity, post-battle, it seemed that the ever-mature and intelligent Hermione Granger was sinking into some kind of judgement-lacking chaos.  She clung to the notion that if she could work her way through these months, navigate these side-swiping emotions, then she might just come out the other side.  Get back to whatever passed for normality in her admittedly far-from-normal life.

"Hermione?"

Shit.  She'd drifted.  She had to stop doing that.

"You can't come with me," she told Harry.  "I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but you're needed here."

"Well, what if I–"

"You can't ask the Wizengamot to reschedule Malfoy's hearing just because you fancy a jaunt to Australia!  And I can't reschedule either.  My parents have put in a lot of work, finding out about this Australian magical school.  And it's got them talking to me again."  She winced.  "Even if it _is_ costing me a fortune in phone cards."

"Okay, I get that, but Ron–"

"No," Hermione said firmly.  "I need Ron here with you."

"Why?  His evidence has already been presented via deposition, just like yours.  He doesn't have to be there."

Hermione paused for a moment, processing a Harry Potter who could toss words like 'deposition' into the conversation.  Okay, so it was the _right_ word, and okay, so she'd been very grateful that Shacklebolt had ensured she would not have to stand in a big scary room with Lucius Malfoy while talking about what had happened to her beneath his roof.  But still...the times were indeed a-changing.

She had the stray notion that thirty years from now Harry would either be the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, the Head Warlock of the Wizengamot, or maybe just Minister for Magic...

"Hermio–"

"Yes!  Sorry.  Just mapping out your legal career."

"What?"

"Never mind.  Look – this is the highest-profile hearing so far.  Lots of publicity.  Lots of attention.  And I don't need to tell you that there are Death Eaters as yet unaccounted for.  Possibly still at large."

"I know.  But they're more likely to have gone to ground.  And they'll stay there, hoping no one recognises what they did.  Like, you know, Nazi war criminals."

"Probably," she agreed.  "Most will do that.  But it would only take one – some bitter, twisted revenge freak, nothing left to lose?  They might strike at Malfoy; they might strike at you.  All it would take is a single moment when you're distracted, and I could l–"  She stopped the sentence right there.  She wasn't going to think about that particular worst case scenario.  She breathed deeply to clear the blossoming sense of panic and then said, "Ron stays with you.  I need to know someone is watching your back."

"But Kingsley–"

"All the Aurors will be doing their jobs.  I'm sure of it.  But that job isn't keeping _you_ safe."  She rubbed at her dry and itchy eyes.  In the last few days she'd rediscovered her capacity for insomnia with something of a vengeance.  "I'd stay here if I could, and I'd be shoulder-to-shoulder with Ron.  No one on this planet knows how to watch your back better than us two."

There was a pause.  Harry was probably thinking, as she was, that there was maybe one other person on the planet who had developed a genuine talent for keeping Harry Potter alive.  But neither of them were going to introduce _that_ name into the conversation.

She shook the thought off.  "But I can't stay.  Things are still too fragile.  For Ron's idea to work, Mum and Dad have to think that I'm relying on them.  If I postpone now, all the progress will go to waste.  They'll take it personally.  Withdraw."

"You don't have to explain," Harry said.  "I know why you have to go."  He frowned.  "I thought this conversation was about why I couldn't go with _you_."

"It's just how the timing worked out," she told him.  "I'll be fine.  Things are at least looking up in Port Augusta, even if the rest of my life is..."  She trailed off.

"Yeah."  Harry glanced at his watch.  "So you're leaving later than last time?"

"Half six," she confirmed.  "There's no intercontinental Portkey later than that.  Saves me the expense of a motel room.  I'll arrive about four am, their time.  I should only have an hour to kill – there's a café I know which opens at five.  I've got it all planned out."

"It's winter, out there," Harry said.

"Yup."

"It'll be cold and dark."

"Yup."

"And the Portkey will land you somewhere out the way, I'm guessing."

"I know the way, now," Hermione told him.  "Stop being such a worrywart."

"Look, take the cloak, at least.  Just in case."

For a moment she wanted to lecture Harry on his lack of faith in her ability to take care of herself.  Then she remembered the way she'd felt on arriving in Port Augusta the last time; she'd even thought, back then, that Harry's cloak would be a welcome option.

Maybe she needed to work harder at accepting help when it was offered.

She nodded.  "Okay."

Harry brightened.  "Good.  Excellent.  Just be a tick."

He left her bedroom.  Hermione drew the ties of her bag together.  This visit was a positive thing, she told herself.  It would be healthy, emotionally, to have something else to think about.

Something to stop her dwelling on white rooms and dark angry eyes.

~~~

Four o'clock in the morning was a quiet, murky, vaguely threatening time in Port Augusta's industrial district.  Hermione arrived intact, breathed through the nausea and the hot-cold prickles that always reminded her of a brief dose of nettle-rash, then she discarded her used Portkey and double-checked that her return Portkey was safely stashed in her bag ready for touch-activation.

She shrugged Harry's cloak over her body prior to stepping out of the cover of the trees near the railway tracks.  The precaution probably wasn't necessary, but it made her feel better nonetheless.  Something about the way the last few days had gone had stirred in her a desire to be invisible.  She'd known such feelings on and off throughout her life, usually when things went wrong.

It went hand-in-hand with the way she always seemed to be the 'other'.  She'd been the magical child in a primary school full of Muggles; she'd been the Muggle-born at Hogwarts; she'd been the only girl in her Hogwarts dorm that didn't care more about cosmetic charms than Arithmancy.  Come to that, she'd been the only girl in her very own trio.  Every so often, that _mattered_.  Try coping with a really bad period, in a tent in the middle of the New Forest in mid-winter, when you've run out of tampons and your two companions are teenage boys...

Something always seemed to set her apart, no matter how hard she tried to fit in.  Which made it all the more galling that she'd now been rejected by Wizarding Britain's ultimate outsider.

And how did the future look?  Harry and Ron were preparing to begin their apprenticeships, and Harry would probably marry Ginny, and Ron would soon find someone better suited to his personality than Hermione.  Most likely they'd all move on from the tight-knit group the three of them had formed.  It was just how things happened.

Hermione was very much afraid that she'd end up left behind.

Meanwhile, there was no guarantee that she'd persuade her parents to let her back into their lives.  And even if she could, was that a connection that would sustain her indefinitely?  She was almost nineteen, and in terms of life experience she felt much older.  Clinging to the sense of belonging that your parents could give you was wonderful and necessary when you were ten years old.  But now?

She might have entertained visions of turning into a scary cat lady.  Except, of course, that at some point between the Weasleys abandoning the Burrow and then returning after the war, Crookshanks had decided to head off on his own for pastures new.  Even her sodding _cat_ had abandoned her.

She wallowed in these memories as she made her slow, foot-dragging way toward the hospital near where her parents lived.  The night was dark, the sky clear, the air cold.  No one was around.  She was all alone, a stranger in a strange land, and something about the setting and the solitude was making her reflect on her failures.  She _knew_ she was wallowing.  Recognising it only made her hate herself a little bit more, because every time she told herself to snap out of it, focus on the positives, move on, grow the fuck up, she couldn't seem to do it.  She'd straighten her shoulders and lift her chin...and thirty seconds later she was back to thinking about what a mess she was making of everything.

Especially with Snape.  Merlin!  She was _such_ an idiot.  She'd recognised, weeks ago, that Severus Snape would never react well to any kind of emotional honesty.

What had she been thinking?

Her last, faint hope was that time would take the sting out of this particular rejection.  It wasn't as if there'd been anything between her and Snape: no sense of unspoken promise, no guarded looks.  And given everything that had happened in recent months – life on the run, torture and injury, the screams of the dying in the midst of battle – basic common sense dictated that she treat her current feelings with caution.  Maybe this would all turn out to have been a weird, stray symptom of her PTSD.  Or a frivolous passing fancy designed to distract her from the rage and the nightmares.

Maybe that was what Snape had thought, too.  It wasn't like he'd had much chance to process the U-turn in her attitude.  She'd spent six years at Hogwarts, during which Severus Snape had been Enemy Number One.  A bit of a battle and some earth-shattering revelations later, and there she was, nicking his dressing gown from the Headmaster's Tower and buying him grapes.  Really, what was the bloke supposed to think?

And for that matter: why had she assumed that he might change his opinion of her?  He'd been consistent in his dislike of her for the whole time they'd been acquainted.  _She_ might be all over the place emotionally, reassessing relationships she'd boxed up years ago, but why would he be doing the same?

She huffed at herself.  She'd been all morally superior with Harry, telling him to look at things through Snape's point of view.  Perhaps it was time she took her own advice.

The problem with that, of course, was that it was tricky to learn about someone else's perspective when they can't stand even to be in the same room as you.

~~~

At the hospital, Hermione found a lonely bench and sat down, huddled in Harry's cloak.  She just needed to wait for five o'clock, when the café around the corner opened up to its earliest customers.  Then she could shrug off the cloak and sit in the warmth and safety of a well-lit business and wait for a sensible hour to call on her parents.

Funny, that her relationship with the people closest to her had become one of the most courteous and careful and etiquette-ridden relationships she had.

Yeah, funny.

Hilarious.

~~~

"Hi Dad," she said, wishing her voice didn't sound so small and child-like.

"Hello there," he replied, and opened the front door wider.

Not 'Hello Hermbles.'  Not 'Hello Princess.'  Not even the casual, "Hello love," that had become his chosen greeting once she'd passed puberty and stopped looking like the bushy-haired little girl who rather suited the paternal nicknames he'd bestowed upon her.

She told herself that "Hello there," was better than "Get lost and never darken our doors again," and made her way inside.

"Morning Hermione," her mum called from the kitchen.  Not quite normal, but closer than the last time she'd been here.  "Coffee?"

She'd just drunk three coffees back to back, in the café that thought a cappuccino could be made using bad filter coffee and hot milk frothed in one of those hand-pump things.  What she really needed was the toilet.  Still, the coffee aroma coming from the kitchen was proof that her mother had gone to some trouble.  Alongside the coffee Hermione could smell warming pastries.

Her mother was wiping her hands on a tea-towel as she appeared in the doorway, looking expectant.  Maybe even a bit hopeful.

Hermione plastered a warm smile over her face.  "It smells wonderful," she said, because she could say that without lying.  "Do you mind if I just pop to the loo?"

"Go right ahead.  I'll get everything ready at the dining table."

"Um–"

Her mother turned back and offered a questioning brow.

"Sorry," Hermione said.  "Only I'm not sure where the, er, the loo is."

Her mother tossed an exasperated look up at the ceiling.  "Of course you don't.  Sorry, dear.  Door at the far end of the living room, then second on the left in the little passageway.  Alan will show you the way if you're stuck."

"Just on my way out to do the bins!" her dad called from the opposite end of the kitchen.

"I'll find my way," she assured her mother.  "Just be a jiffy."

She went to relieve her coffee-heavy bladder, thinking that if she was going to accentuate the positive then she needed to put a great big tick in the 'plus' column after a brief exchange that had seen her mother call her 'dear' and then use her father's real first name.

~~~

Twenty minutes later, and replete with croissants and jam and the kind of coffee that had been ground from just the right blend of beans, Hermione listened patiently as her parents talked her through the contact they'd had with the only magical school on the entire continent.

"It's down to the history, apparently," her father said.  He was leaning forward, eager to tell her things: the same old dad he'd always been, so keen to help and so prone to feeling hurt when it became clear that sometimes he couldn't.  "The indigenous Australian people have their own way of doing things, of course."

"Yes," her mother said, "and given the rather unfortunate history those people have with the European settlers that came here, it's understandable that they don't want much overlap between their magical institutions and those that have been founded to take care of non-Aborigines."

"Is one allowed to say 'non-Aborigine'?" her father mused with a frown.

"Don't see why not," her mum said.

Hermione hid a smile.  Her parents were pure, unadulterated, liberal middle-class.  Almost as disconcerted by cultures other than their own as they were terrified of being accused of prejudice towards them.  But bless their hearts, they always tried to do the right thing.

"Anyway," her dad said, "the fact remains that there are few, er, 'non-Aboriginal' witches and wizards over here.  Probably because magical people weren't a part of the initial mass-migration."

"That makes sense," Hermione said.  "So most of the witches and wizards who've turned up here in the last couple of centuries will either be those who want a fresh start, those who come to play in the Quidditch leagues, or those who are Muggle-born like me."

"Exactly," her father said.  "Most magicals who come to Australia are already adult.  I'm sure a few have settled here and had children, but comparatively speaking there's not that many who are school-age.  I mean, considering the geographic area in question."

Because magical people tended towards conservatism in their attitudes.  Small 'c'.  They were traditionalists.  They didn't like big changes.  Pulling up their roots and moving out here would rarely be an attractive option.

"So I'm guessing it's quite a small school, then?" she suggested.

"Small," her dad said.  "But not unrespected.  They're in Parramatta.  There's a thriving magical community tucked away there – like Diagon Alley and so forth in London, I suppose."

"I see."

"More importantly, their exam certification follows the Wizarding Britain model."

"Well, that's helpful," she said.  "No clashes with the syllabus."

"Just what we thought!"  Her dad looked delighted.

"And this top-up course you mentioned when we spoke on the phone?"

Her dad sat back.  "Mrs. Minns was quite clear about the timescales.  The school terms are all topsy-turvy over here.  Like in Britain, they're built around a long break in the summer.  But here in Australia that means a holiday starting early December and then progressing through to February before the next school year starts."

"Of course it does," Hermione realised.  "I hadn't even thought of that."

"Neither had we, until we got into our correspondence with Mrs. Minns.  Anyway, the options you would have are to take the whole of your final year there, starting next February, alongside the other final year students."

Hermione shuddered.  "I'll be two years older than most of them.  I just can't do it."

Her father studied her for a while, which made for an awkward pause before he shook himself, glanced at her mum, smiled a bit sadly and then said, "Yes, well, that brings us to option two.  Every year there are students who don't quite make the grade on some of their exams.  Throughout the summer holidays the school runs extra tuition classes prior to a series of resits.  They pride themselves on their pass rates, you see."

"So this is sort of an intensive set of classes?"

"Very much so.  Students usually pick and choose those areas they need help with.  But there's a good eight weeks to play with.  And Mrs. Minns believes that if you're as advanced with your own studies as we've claimed–"

"And we've never had to exaggerate, have we, when it comes to academic achievement," her mother pointed out.

"Indeed not," her dad agreed with smile of pride.  "I'm afraid we talked you up a bit to Mrs. Minns.  She was reluctant, at first, to admit you as anything other than a full final year student.  The, er, pass rate thing, you see.  She doesn't want students sitting exams and then failing them."

"Got it."  Hermione frowned.  "So she's administration, is she, this Mrs. Minns?"

"Good heavens, no," her mother said.  "She's the headmistress."

"Oh.  Right then.  And she'll see me?"

"She wants to meet you, prior to confirming your place.  If she thinks you've got enough about you, she'll get you the syllabus timetables and allow you to map out the tutorials you think you'd find valuable."

"This all sounds very promising," Hermione said.  Her parents beamed at her.  "And, er, what about accommodation?  Does the school have anything to offer?"

Another pause.  Her parents looked at each other, communicating silently in the way that married couples often could.

"We've spoken about that, me and your father," her mum said.  "I mean, it's up to you entirely, Hermione, and the last thing we'd want to do is step on your toes.  You've clearly done an awful lot of growing up since the last time we were...well, a proper family, I suppose, if that isn't too bald a summary."

"I think that's a fair summary," Hermione said.  "And I appreciate that.  And I want you to know that I feel the same.  I never wanted to make your lives worse by coming back into it."

And another pause: a brittle one.  She wondered if she'd said the wrong thing.  Damn it, she was doing her best to be fair and generous.

"In any case," her dad said with a slight throat-clearing cough, "we thought that we'd let you decide.  Mrs. Minns says she can help you locate some student digs in Parramatta if you need to, at a favourable discount.  But since it'd only be for a couple of months, it hardly seems worthwhile.  The school is connected to Australia's... Linda, what's it called?"

"The Floo Network," her mum said.

"Yes.  Connected by Floo to..."

"The nearest point to here would be the local ministry office in Adelaide.  You could Portkey from there," her mum said, clearly preening with the vocabulary she was using, "or, once you know this area better, you could Aspirate."

"It's, er, Apparate."  Hermione smiled, trying to show her mother that she was impressed with the effort that had gone into their information-gathering.  "That would be better, long-term, since I could Apparate straight here.  I'd just need a private spot."

"Maybe near the side of the garage?" her father suggested.

"Not overlooked at all," her mum agreed.

Hermione felt a surge of hope.  "So...you'd be okay with me staying here with you, then?" she asked, needing to dot the i's and cross the t's.

Her mother sat back.  "Your father and I never really knew why we were so adamant that we needed a spare bedroom when we took the lease on this place.  We'd just moved here from Surrey, we had no friends and family that might use it.  And yet..."

"And yet," her dad said with a smile, "we knew we needed it."  He looked at Hermione.  "And now we know why."

It was the closest Hermione had come to feeling deeply, contentedly happy in quite some time.

~~~

The magical school was tucked away amid a hidden maze of streets and alleyways that were accessible via a portal underneath a railway bridge.  Hermione was able to Floo straight there from Adelaide.

She'd changed her clothes at her parents' house.  If she was attending what was effectively an interview for a school place, she couldn't go with her ubiquitous jeans and hooded top.  She'd disappeared into the spare room her parents had until recently been confused by, and emerged wearing a pressed blouse, a narrow skirt and a jacket.  Her tights were dark and sheer; her shoes elegant but sensibly heeled.  Truth be told, she felt uncomfortable and ridiculous, but her mother nodded brusque approval and her father stared for a moment, like he wasn't sure he recognised the young woman before him.

Wizarding Britain had accustomed Hermione to magical buildings that were all stonework and brickwork and candlelight.  However, just as the rest of Australia had a different architectural style to the UK, its magical nooks and crannies were also different.  The buildings tended not to extend beyond two storeys.  The frontages were clean, glazed, made of modern straight lines rather than arches and alcoves.

She stood at the window in an upper storey corridor of the school, gazing down on the street below.  London, in both Muggle and magical terms, had accustomed her to bustling.  There were always people, always crowds.  Even the buildings tended to crowd you.  Australia was different.  Its town centre spaces were open and airy.  She wondered if she could grow to like it.  It was certainly worth a two-month experiment, since it would gain her some NEWTs and allow her to settle back in to her relationship with her parents.  And perhaps a break from all the reminders of loss and suffering and mistakes would be a good thing.

A door opened behind her and a voice said, "Miss Wilkins be coming inside now."  She turned, expecting to see a House Elf, but the creature that had spoken looked nothing like one.  It was so thin it resembled more a stick-drawing than anything else.  Its elongated arms and legs looked like they were on the verge of snapping.  Its face was thin, but even so it was almost as wide as its torso.  The eyes were stone-coloured against darker skin or scales – it was impossible to tell at this distance – and regarded her cautiously.

"Oh, yes.  Thank you."  She'd forgotten that her name, for the moment, was Hermione Wilkins; her parents had decided to keep using the false names for any kind of formal situation.  It had seemed like the sensible choice, since it tallied with their legal paperwork.

The creature stepped back as she approached.  Hermione paused in the doorway, looking more closely at a being she knew nothing about.  Her desire to learn cut through any nervousness about her upcoming interview, and she tried a smile.

"Hello," she said.  "I'm so sorry, but I don't know anything about your kind.  Would it be rude to ask what you are?"

"Me me," the creature said.

"Yes, you.  Um – what race do you belong to?"

"Mimi," the creature repeated.  "You be human witch.  I be Mimi.  From the north."

"Oh, I see.  Well, it's a pleasure to meet you."

The creature's delicate form seemed to half-bow, then it closed the door behind Hermione as she stepped into the room.  It was a classroom, filled with perhaps half a dozen chairs which had those built-in hinged desks on them.  A blackboard was mounted at one end of the room, a larger desk stood before it, with a second door to the side which stood half-open.

"Be waiting just one minute," the Mimi advised.  It tilted its head towards the second door, then it turned away and stepped up to the door Hermione had just come through.  With a slight lean, the creature had somehow slipped through the crack around the closed door and was gone.

"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" Hermione quipped to herself.

A voice came through the second door.  "Be with you in just a sec, Hermione!"  It was a female voice, thoroughly Australian, brisk but not lacking warmth.

"No problem," she called back.  She turned her attention to the back wall of the classroom and a display of the life cycle of a Spinlizzie: a native Australian magical shrub that immediately had her humming 'The Boys Are Back in Town' in her head.

A minute or so passed.

"First year Herbology, that," the voice said, this time less of a shout.  "Spinlizzies are useful things in Potions.  Similar properties to Dittany; very good in healing.  But it'll get you high as a kite if you don't balance it out with a sobriety agent."

Hermione frowned at the display.  "Is NEWT level potions here all about the indigenous flora and fauna, then?"

"Oh, no, not at all.  We use what we can grow, but the brews you'll be expected to do match the syllabus at Hogwarts.  I should know.  Potions is my area."

Hermione turned from the display to see a short, stout teacher at the front of the classroom organising a stack of paperwork on the larger desk.  "I see.  Well it's good to meet you, Professor, er–"

The woman laughed: just a single big "Ha!"  Then she bent down to stow something in the drawers of the desk.  Voice straining as she leaned over her own considerable girth, she said, "Just Mrs. Minns, dear.  Minnsy to my friends, but never in the classroom.  Over here we save all that 'professor' business for academics that actually earn it.  You know – masters degree, doctorate, tenure track?  Always thought there was something unbelievably arrogant in calling yourself 'professor' just because you teach high school kids."

Hermione had never really considered it before.  Prior to her year out from Hogwarts she'd been very accepting of authority.  But now?  Well, she could sort of see where Mrs. Minns was coming from.  "I think you might be right," she acceded.

Cheerfully, the voice – now emerging from behind the desk – said, "Well, I'm not always right.  Just never, ever wrong."  Another laugh.  "Sorry to keep you, dear – I'm almost there.  Last Friday was the end of term.  I've a bit of housekeeping to get done."

"It's fine.  I appreciate you seeing me at short notice like this."

"Oh, no worries at all there, dear.  I was going to be here anyway.  And it's not like you're the only one.  Three families have contacted me in the last month.  Some of them are moving away from Britain _en masse_ – four, five generations.  Seems to me the whole place is up a gumtree since this dark wizard fell."

Hermione, who had started to walk towards the desk, stopped.

And thought.

And decided that she should have seen that coming.  Professor McGonagall had told her that registrations were down for the new Hogwarts year.  She'd said that it was the Slytherins who weren't coming back, even some of the youngest ones.  Wizarding Britain had, for the moment, made Slytherin synonymous with Death Eater.  However unfairly.

Mrs. Minns emerged from behind her desk and stood as straight as her stature could claim.  She offered Hermione a warm and friendly smile as she looked at her properly for the very first time.

The smile slipped.

"Oh," said the headmistress.

"Yes?"

"You're Hermione Granger."

"Yes."  Hermione was bewildered for a moment before the note of accusation caught up with her. "Oh!  The name thing.  My parents are here under different identities, just for the time being."

Mrs. Minns looked her up and down.  "Yep.  London to a brick, you are Hermione Granger."

She blinked.  "I, er, I'm sorry for any confusion."

"Talk about setting the cat among the pigeons..."  Mrs. Minns shook her head, apparently at herself, then she sighed.  "Right ho.  You'd better take a seat, Miss Granger.  We've a few things to go over."

~~~

"The problem is," Mrs. Minns said, "I won't be able to get you mate's rates on digs..."

"That's fine," Hermione said.  "I can stay with my parents and Floo each day."

"Beaut," muttered Mrs. Minns.

~~~

"So the real problem is your timetable.  You're taking, what, six NEWTs?  That's a lot.  I don't see how you can fit in all the tutorials you'll need.  Not in a single summer vac."

"Fortunately I won't need much revision time on at least three of my exams.  I'd already covered the final year syllabus before I was done with year six."

"Sweet," muttered Mrs. Minns.

~~~

"So you'll have brought your certificates?"

Hermione picked up her bag.  "My OWLs?  Certainly, I've–"

"No, not those.  Your _Muggle_ qualifications."

Hermione looked at the headmistress, startled.  "You require your students to have undertaken Muggle exams?"

"Too right, we do," Mrs. Minns said, looking shifty.  "How d'you expect a student to write a decent essay without basic English language skills?  How can you advance in Arithmancy without an understanding of algebra or calculus?  And Potions is just chemistry with bits added."

The headmistress looked at Hermione with a hint of triumph and folded her arms across her ample bosom.

"Well, fortunately I began sitting my GCSEs the summer after my first year at Hogwarts," Hermione said.  "I wanted options after I finished school.  The chance to go to university, I mean.  I did the easy ones first, obviously, since I was only twelve at the time.  English Language and Lit."  She rummaged in her bead bag and pulled out the hard-backed envelope she kept all her Muggle certificates in.  "I did Maths GCSE the next summer.  French, I fitted in over two years of Christmas and Easter breaks.  Chemistry was always going to be hard work, though.  It has a lot more of a syllabus..."

"Ah!"

"But I passed that with an A, two summers ago."

Mrs. Minns looked like she was grinding her teeth.  "And your A levels?"

"Do you need to see the certificates I have?" Hermione asked sweetly.

~~~

"Of course, there's the issue with your registration," Mrs. Minns said, by now with a hint of desperation.  "We can't have a student here under a false name."

"Oh, I wouldn't be.  I was surprised you recognised me–"

Mrs. Minns snorted her disbelief.

"...but," Hermione went on, "I'm not trying to hide who I am.  It's just that my parents needed to get out of the UK for a while, and we didn't have time to go through the standard immigration channels."

"There you go!" Mrs. Minns said.  "We have a duty to report who it is we're educating to the Muggle government.  The paperwork will need your parents' details.  How's that going to look, if they're here under assumed identities?"

Hermione relaxed in her chair.  She knew, now, that she had no need to impress this woman.  She was not going to be admitted to this school.

"Really?" she asked dubiously.  "Because the British Ministry of Magic makes a habit of revealing as little information to Downing Street as it can possibly get away with."

"We do things differently here," Mrs. Minns snapped.

Hermione nodded and looked around the classroom.  "Small school.  Limited student body.  Most students are Muggle-born like me, right?  Pretty average family background.  Not like the UK – those ancient magical families dripping with wealth and political power.  Right?"

"Your point?"

"Mrs. Minns, why don't you simply tell me why you've decided that I won't be able to finish my NEWTs here?"

"I've explained–"

"Because at the moment, my friend Xenophilius Lovegood, owner and editor of The Quibbler, will be very happy to publicise the fact that the only magical school in Australia is demanding advanced Muggle qualifications from any potential new students."

Mrs. Minns tried a glare.  It was a poor attempt, but a glare it was.  Then she sighed and slumped behind the teacher's desk.

"See it my way, Miss Granger," she cajoled.  "We need new cauldrons, and that means having them shipped from Japan.  We need more books for the library.  Our current crop of second years numbers three.  Three bloody kids!  But I have to employ sufficient teachers to cover every year, every subject, else the exam accreditation lapses."

Hermione nodded slowly.  "You need some private sponsorship."

"It'd be nice."

"And I'm guessing that the families heading this way from England are wealthy Purebloods."

"We don't judge people by their ancestry here, Miss Granger."

"No?  I thought Australia was as prone to racism as the rest of the world."

"I mean–"

"I know what you mean.  And for the record, a lot of those wealthy Pureblood families _do_ judge people by their ancestry.  And harshly.  But perhaps you'll get lucky.  Perhaps you'll end up with all the _nice_ Purebloods fleeing Wizarding Britain after their poster-boy for bigotry got taken down."

"They need us more than we need them right now."

"I'm sure that's true.  And I wish you and the school well with everything.  I even wish _them_ well – the people who need a fresh start.  Everyone ought to get a second chance."

"Too right."

"So just to clarify – you can't register me here, even for a couple of months, because it will unsettle the other newcomers."

"There's that.  And there's the fact that you're a bloody celebrity.  I recognised your face, Miss Granger, because you've been all over the press.  Doesn't matter where you plonk your backside – some newshound'll be right behind you."  The headmistress sighed.  "I can't risk that level of publicity.  Look, I'm sorry.  I wish I could help you.  But I've got to look out for the school."

Hermione nodded.  "I understand.  I spent the last few years learning that life is not fair."

"Maybe you should try Singapore.  They speak better English than you poms, there."

"Maybe I'll try that."  She stood up.  "Goodbye, Mrs. Minns.  Good luck with the Purebloods.  You might need it."

She picked up her bag and walked back to the Floo.

~~~

The conversation she had later that afternoon with her parents didn't go nearly so well as the earlier one.

"It was a done deal!" her father complained.  "I thought everyone was happy!"

"It's nobody's fault," Hermione tried to placate.  "I mean, it's unfair, but really it's just one of those things."

"I don't understand," her mother said.  "You told us it would be best to use our other names–"

"Yes, I did, because those are the names the Muggle government has on record."

"But we should have used our real names when we dealt with the magical world?"

"I don't know!  I hadn't thought that bit through."

"What I don't understand," her father said, "is why the name 'Granger' now seems to be mud."

"It isn't!  It's just...it's a bit too well known.  After everything."

"Everything?"

"Things will calm down.  I was only ever Harry's friend.  I wasn't really that important."

"If you weren't important then why the hell did you uproot us from our home and our lives and dump us here?" he demanded.

"You know why!  Oh, fine, okay, so I'm not completely unimportant.  People know me, they know who I am, and I'm not comfortable with it but it's just the way it is."

"And the person they know you to be is unworthy of a school place?" her mother put in.  "What did you _do_ , Hermione?"

"I helped Harry save the sodding world!"  Hermione pinched at her brow, knowing that her mother was looking at her in shock.  She was pretty sure she hadn't shouted at her parents since she'd been about six and still prone to the odd tantrum.  Forcing herself to calm down, she said, "It isn't that I'm a bad person.  It's that I'm well known, and the press follow me around a bit, and that's going to be awkward for the school in Parramatta very, very soon."

"Why?" her father asked.  "If you're a celebrity, a hero, then isn't that a good thing?  Makes the school look good, that it can attract the likes of you."

"It's not about me," Hermione said.  "It's about the other people who are coming here from England."

"What other people?"

"It doesn't matter.  Look, there's other options for me.  There's a place in British Columbia I can try.  Mrs. Minns mentioned Singapore.  And there's still Beauxbatons–"

"Great," her mum said, brittle and hurt.  "Lots of other options.  Makes you wonder why you asked for our help in the first place!"

"Please, don't be–"

" _What_ other people?" her father interrupted.

Hermione sighed hard.  "Some of the families who got caught up in the war are moving away from Britain.  Maybe they were on the wrong side, maybe it's just guilt by association – doesn't really matter.  They want a fresh start, and some of them are coming here.  And these people are rich, and they're used to buying influence."

Her dad's eyes narrowed.  "So this school has decided that it wants to welcome a handful of rich war criminals rather than you?"

"They might not be war criminals.  It would be wrong to judge until I know who it is.  And–"

"Death Eaters," her mum said quietly.

"Mum?"

"They were affiliated with the Death Eaters, these people who are moving out here."

"Possibly.  Some of them.  It's hard to say without–"

"So it isn't over, is it?" her mother said.  She was trying to control the hitch in her voice.  "You turned our lives upside down, and just when we think we can put all that behind us, maybe work at healing some of those wounds, we're back to square one."

"I don't think you need to worry about–"

"Why not?"  Her mother looked sharply at her.  "You were worried enough to do something monstrous, last year.  Why not now?"

"Mum..."

"Calm down, darling," her dad said, "it's all–"

"Don't tell me it's all right," her mother snapped.  "What happens now?  The Australian ministry of magic knows you've been coming here.  Someone passes you at the Adelaide office and wonders why you're here, or-or someone else mentions seeing you.  And the news gets passed back, and finds its way to one of those people who wants to kill all the Muggles, or Muggle-borns, or whatever it is, and before you know it there's a lynch-mob outside the bungalow, and our daughter is mixing up our memories again, and-and-and scooping us up and tossing us down in some other new life!"

"I wouldn't do that again!" Hermione protested.

"How do we know?"

There was a hollow silence, as the complete absence of trust in their relationship was brought into sharp relief.

"Look, if I don't come back here, if I just leave you alone, would _that_ make you feel safer?" Hermione asked.

" _Feel_ safer?  _Feel_?  What difference would that make?  Would we _be_ safer?  Would _you_ be safer, if you weren't constantly travelling out here, on your own, away from all your friends?  Constantly visiting your useless, talentless, boring, ordinary parents who can't do a thing to help you when the lynch-mob moves in?"

Hermione sensed an itching on her cheeks and realised she was crying.  She swiped at the tears, angry and horrified.  She'd lost her way in this discussion.  She just didn't know what to say to make things right.  "I understand," she lied, trying so hard to sound like the adult she thought she was.  "I get it.  All I've done is make things worse.  I'm sorry.  I tried.  I wanted this to work.  I wanted that really badly."

Her father had moved to her mum's side and was trying to comfort her.  Hermione knew when she was beaten.

"I'll just go.  I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry.  You two, please, just – look after each other.  Be happy."

She picked up her bag and fled the house, at first walking briskly and then running.  As soon as she found a semi-private spot she Apparated to the nearest safe place she knew: a stand of trees by a railway line in Port Augusta's bleak industrial quarter.

She felt a sting of pain that, three racing heartbeats later, turned into a burning jolt of agony.  Hermione looked down at her left hand to see that her ring finger had not made it through the Apparition along with the rest of her.  The stump that remained was dripping blood all over the ground.

It was the first time she'd splinched herself.  And she'd done it after weeks spent limiting her attempts at Apparition because she just _knew_ her head wasn't on straight.

She sniffed back tears, reached one-handed into her bag and shakily summoned Dittany.  She bound up her hand with a clean handkerchief as best she could.  Then she popped two Paracetamol dry, wincing at the bitterness, and started walking.

Her interview shoes rubbed against her heels.  She was getting blisters.

And she was, quite literally, falling apart.

It was definitely turning into one of those days.

~~~

At the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden, no one was about.  It was a cold winter's day, and as the afternoon grew late the ground threatened a renewed frost.

Hermione sat on a bench on the boardwalk, looking out across the grey expanse of the gulf.  She'd sat there for over an hour.

A look around, to make sure she was alone, then she un-sleeved her wand and prepared to cast her Patronus.  She needed to send a message to Harry.  She needed to tell him what had happened.  Hell, she just needed to know she wasn't all alone.

The spell didn't work.  Of course it didn't.  Patronuses needed happy memories.

She thought about the day she'd got her Hogwarts letter: that usually did the trick.  But all she could remember was the trepidation on her parents' faces.  She'd never really noticed that before.

A spark, then the spell fizzled.

She thought about making love with Ron, hidden in the long grass three fields over from the Burrow.  "Is it here?" he whispered, delving intimately, trying so hard to please.  "Here?  Here?" Until they were both helpless with laughter and prodding each other in entirely random places while demanding, "Here?  Here?  How about here?"

A moment later her mind had played a trick on her, and she was watching him snog the face off Lavender Brown in the Gryffindor Common Room.  And she hated herself because she knew it didn't matter.

The brief flare from her wand stuttered and failed.

She thought about Severus Snape, smirking at her across the low table in his hospital room.  "Comeuppance," he murmured in her thoughts.  "I almost like you, Granger."  The stab of pain and loss that came with those memories made the throb of her severed finger feel like barely a tickle.

Hermione sobbed into the wintry air.  Her wand did not even spark.

One last try.

Harry told her that she was the best friend he could have asked for.  He grinned a lopsided grin and offered her a birthday present haphazardly wrapped with paper from WH Smith.  He snagged a roast potato off her plate as they ate dinner in the Great Hall and then moved his parsnips to the edge of his plate so she could help herself, and neither of them needed to say a word because they just understood each other.

He came back to life – thank heaven, thank goodness, thank Merlin, thank _everything_ – he came back to life...

Her Patronus swirled and formed before her.  For a moment she could only half-laugh through the tears.  Surely if she could still cast this spell then all was not lost.

Then she stopped laughing, and she frowned in puzzlement.  Her Patronus had not manifested as a playful otter.  Perched before her, sleek of feathers and pronounced of beak, was what looked very much like a rook.

"You've got to be joking," Hermione said.

The rook tilted its head.  Its shimmering form seemed to quirk an eyebrow at her.  This had to be in her imagination, of course, since rooks most certainly did not have eyebrows.

"Fine.  Whatever.  Make an even bigger idiot out of me," she said.  "And no, that's not the message."

The rook shrugged, looked all around, then preened at a wing.  Hermione got a hold of herself and cast the additional charm that allowed her Patronus to carry her voice.

"Harry," she said clearly, "it's all gone rather badly.  The school thing was a no-go, and Mum and Dad aren't best pleased about how things turned out and have pretty much sent me packing.  I need some time to get myself sorted out.  I, er...I hurt my hand."  For a moment her façade broke down and she sobbed again.  "Harry, I'm sorry.  I just – I'll be back when I'm ready, okay?  I can't face things there.  Everything I touch is turning to crap.  So I'm going to find somewhere safe where I can be alone.  Just for a while.  I'll be in touch when I'm coming home.  But you're not to worry.  Okay?"

She waved her wand.  The rook shook itself, rolled its eyes at her, then swept off along the cliff edge before dissipating into whichever magical dimensions it chose to travel.

Now she had to work out where to go.  Fortunately Australia was a big, empty country, so there had to be a place, somewhere on this landmass, where she wasn't in danger of screwing something up.

~~~

The sun hung low in the sky behind her when she finally decided that her emotional state was steady enough for a return to Adelaide.  She fished out her Portkey and activated it.

At the information desk in the Department for Magical Transportation, she asked how easy it was to get to Uluru from Adelaide.  The wizard at the desk shook his head at her, like it was a daft question, and offered her a scroll with a list of tourist hotspots to choose from.

Something in the back of her mind told her that the Aboriginal Australian people weren't happy when Westerners went stomping all over their sacred rock.  Better to view it from a distance.  So she asked for a Portkey to the Valley of the Winds.

She watched the sun finally set in the Northern Territory, from a point just off the marked trail, shrouded by a cluster of stunted desert oaks and tufts of spiny-leaved spinifex.  The earthy red of Kata Tjuta's distant rocky domes was made fiery in the receding light.

Hermione clutched Harry's cloak around her, cast a warming charm against the rapidly cooling night, and tried not to feel like the loneliest woman in the world.

~~~

A flutter of feathers woke her.  She hadn't realised she'd fallen asleep.

Was her Patronus back?  Impossible.  It would have dissipated after delivering its message, and only she could cast another.

She looked around without seeing very much.  The night was darker than dark: no moonlight, no starlight.  And she was freezing cold.  It took a moment to work enough feeling into her right hand that she could re-cast her warming charm.  Once that was done, a Lumos was the next order of business.

An owl perched on a branch of the nearest desert oak.  It was clearly annoyed at the journey it had been required to undertake.  On its foot was tied a tightly-curled parchment.

"Harry, you worrywart," Hermione said.  But even as she spoke, she knew she'd secretly hoped he'd do this.  She wasn't nearly as independent as she wanted to make out.

She uncovered her head from Harry's cloak and grabbed at her bag as her body warmed enough to stop shivering.  The owl did not react as her form partially emerged from invisibility; owls weren't fooled by that kind of thing.  She wasn't carrying any owl treats, but she'd bought two breakfast bars from the café by the hospital early the previous morning, believing that she might need provisions at some point during the day.  She broke off the end of one, crumbled it into pieces and then set it out on a spare bit of paper.  The owl hopped down from the tree with another flutter of feathers.

While the owl pecked hungrily, Hermione gently took the note from the bird's leg.  She upped her Lumos and unravelled the scroll.

 _'Granger,'_ she read, in a devastatingly familiar hand.

The sight made her gasp, and she clamped her left hand over her mouth.  She then yelped at the pain, as her makeshift dressing pulled where the bleeding had dried.  The owl paused in its meal, regarded her curiously, then went back to the oat crumbs.

"Severus Snape, why are you writing to me while I'm doing the shoddiest walkabout ever?" she muttered.

One way to find out:

_'Granger,_

_You truly are the most imbecilic numbskull it has ever been my misfortune to meet.  Seriously?  You thought it was a good idea to try subtle-and-manipulative with your parents, while offering your full and frank emotional outpourings to the former head of Slytherin?_

_I thought you were supposed to be intelligent._

_Potter stormed in here at not even eight in the morning – an unpleasant occurrence at the best of times, and an event for which I can apparently hold you responsible.  It took the young nitwit a good ten minutes before he could speak to me in sentences.  Apparently you have sent him a very worrying Patronus, which prompted him to dash out and telephone your parents.  He was not reassured by their hysteria.  (Parents will get like that when they chase after their daughter and witness bloodied bits falling off her.  If, by the way, you are looking for your finger, be advised that your father has secured the item and has it on ice.)_

_Potter tells me you're in something of a state.  Pull yourself together, woman.  This is your mess.  Fix it._

_Go and tell your parents that you miss them and you want them to come home. That is what they need to hear._

_Then get back to Britain and speak to McGonagall.  You do not need the assistance of a second-rate Potions Mistress like Minns; she can't even use apostrophes correctly in the articles she submits to Potions Quarterly.  We will get you through your NEWTs, even if I have to hammer some advanced Potions into that absurd frizzy head of yours myself._

_Clear enough?  Good.  Now sort yourself out and come home._

_SS_

_PS:  A rook?  Hardly flattering, though I suppose I should be grateful that your subconscious did not conjure a bat.  Still, since you have rather tediously placed me in a position where this needs to be said:-_

_You are too young._

_All else besides, if I avoid Azkaban in two weeks' time then I could yet be subjected to a different and more horrifying sentence: a further interval of teaching.  You may have left puberty far behind, but until I am no longer your teacher this is immaterial.  I am guilty of many things, but I do not mess around with my students._

_As for the future – do not toy with me, Hermione.  I am an unkind man when threatened, and making me feel anything beyond contempt for you qualifies as a threat.  Tread very, very carefully._

_PPS:  Are you still sitting there...?'_

She read the letter twice.  She laughed through a few more tears.  Then she stood up and looked around at the dark landscape.

"Right then," she said, feeling galvanised into action.

She looked around a bit more.  She could barely see her own hand in front of her face.

"Um..."

~~~


	9. Some Enchanted Evening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You have plenty of courage, I am sure," answered Oz. "All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty."
> 
> L. Frank Baum  
>  'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' 1900

Having a bloodied handkerchief wrapped around your hand, and holding up a polythene bag containing your severed finger, was – as it turned out – an excellent way to make the sleepy night shift at the Adelaide Portkey hub accept that an emergency intercontinental Portkey was needed.

Hermione left Australia at 4:25 am local time, following an emotional and uplifting hour with her parents.  She arrived back in London at just before seven o'clock the previous evening.

From the Portkey office she took the Floo to St. Mungo's.  A familiar figure was in the reception area as she stepped clear and dusted herself off.

"Visiting hours are over, Hermione," called Constance the Mediwitch.  "Glad to see you, though.  He's been in a right old snit since you stopped bringing him coffee, even by his own impressive standards."

Hermione held up her injured hand and her polythene bag.  This combination was becoming quite the universal access-pass.

"Ouch," said Constance.  "Sorry, I'm just going off-shift."  She pointed at a woman in Healer's robes leaning against the reception desk.  "Healer Montague will sort you out."

Hermione waved her thanks and marched over.  The Healer cast a glance over Hermione's injury.

"Splinched?"

"Good and proper," Hermione agreed.

The Healer made an unimpressed noise.  "Leave a leg behind.  Or a lung.  Those are the real splinchings.  Need a bit of work and skill.  A finger?  Hardly worth the bother."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint," Hermione said tartly.

The Healer smirked.  "Come on then, Miss Granger.  Let's put you back together again."

~~~

While Healer Montague cast a series of charms on Hermione's severed finger to ensure it was clean and ready for reattachment, Hermione finally caught herself up on the changing time-zone.  Not so long ago she'd fallen into an exhausted sleep in the middle of the Australian outback.  Now it was the previous evening, on the same British day that had seen Lucius Malfoy tried before the Wizengamot.

"I don't suppose you know how the trial went, do you?" Hermione asked the Healer, between charms.

"Malfoy?" the Healer said.  "Azkaban."

"He went back to prison."  Hermione was surprised by the relief that she felt.

"For less time than he should," Healer Montague said.  "Even your friend Harry Potter was arguing for leniency in the courtroom.  Something about South Africa and truth and reconciliation?  He lost me there, rather."

Hermione smiled.  "Harry is a good man."

"Hmm.  Too good, perhaps.  Consensus in the staff room is that Malfoy got away with one."

"What's the sentence?"

"Six years.  He'll still be a relatively young wizard when he gets out."  Montague sniffed.  "And let's not forget that Azkaban is no longer home to Dementors.  All prisoners lose nowadays is their freedom.  They can keep their sanity."  Another sniff.  "If, of course, the kind of people who followed Voldemort can claim sanity in the first place."

Hermione shrugged.  "Takes all sorts to make a world."

"We can do with less of Malfoy's sort."

"Amen to that," Hermione said.

"Amen," Montague agreed.  Then, at Hermione's belated murmur of surprise, the Healer smirked.  "Married a Muggle-born, didn't I?  Couldn't call myself a Christian, but I speak the lingo."

"The last year or so must have been especially hard for you, then," Hermione guessed.

"We were in hiding in Ireland until Voldemort's fall.  For which, Miss Granger, my family owes you a debt of thanks."

"I did a lot less than people think," Hermione said.  "Harry's the one who had to die.  And Severus Snape had to play out a role he abhorred for twenty years.  He had to do things no one should have to contemplate."  She gave the Healer a small smile.  "I was just a sidekick."

The Healer took her severed finger, placed Hermione's hand flat on the surface of the treatment table and lined the two things up.

"Way I heard," Montague said, "you kept Potter safe all through Hogwarts.  You kept him clear of the hunting pack for as long as you could.  You put the clues together that Dumbledore left.  You didn't give anything away to Malfoy's cronies, even when that demented harridan was torturing you.  You stood by your friend through thick and thin."  The Healer smiled at her.  "You should have been a Hufflepuff, Miss Granger."

"I'll take that as a great compliment."

Montague laughed.  "You surprise me.  Thought my caring-sharing house was viewed at best with a kind of patronising indulgence."

"Not by me," Hermione said.

Clearly delighted, and trying to stern-face her way through it, the Healer shook her head and instructed Hermione to hold still.  Ten seconds later, Hermione's left hand once again had every digit present and correct.

"Hold your hand up.  Let me do the diagnostics," Montague said.

Hermione did as she was told, but she could already sense the way the finger had been reattached in a true and correct way.  She was, once again, whole.  At least physically.

"A good job, well done," Montague announced, satisfied.  "I'll walk you downstairs."

They were up on the fourth floor, which dealt with spell damage.  As they trotted down the stairs, Hermione bit at her lip, glanced at her wristwatch, and then gave in to the inevitable.

"I don't suppose I could persuade you to look the other way when we go past the first floor, could I?" she asked the Healer.

Montague wrinkled her brow.  "Visiting hours are over, Miss Granger.  Perhaps you could come back tomorrow."

"Perhaps I could," she said hesitantly.

Montague huffed a laugh.  "Auror Templeton is on duty.  You'll easily sweet-talk your way past him.  But do not let any of the Mediwitches or wizards on the first floor see you.  A few of them are still quite cross that their game with the tea-tray was scuppered."

"Oh.  You, er, know about that."

"There was staff room talk."  They neared the first floor landing.  "If you are seen, Miss Granger, I shall deny all knowledge."

"Thank you for putting my finger back on," Hermione said.  "It was lovely to chat with you."

She rummaged in her bag, summoned Harry's cloak, and smirked at Healer Montague as she swept the cloak around herself.

Montague shook her head.  "My kids are not going to believe me when I tell them..."  She turned back to the staircase and walked away.

~~~

The first corridor was clear.  Hermione had replaced her interview shoes with her trainers before she'd left her parents house, so she made little noise as she moved along.

She turned a corner, past the double doors into the main creature-induced injuries ward.  She glanced inside.  The ward had only a few occupied beds, and a Mediwizard was sitting at a desk near the door.  He didn't glance up as she paused.

This next stretch of corridor was home to the small, localised staff room, and some bathrooms and storerooms.  It was empty as Hermione started down it, before a door swung open and she stopped.  She regulated her breathing and pressed herself back against the wall, leaving as much room as possible in the passageway for others to use, reminded all the while of those times she and Harry and Ron had used the cloak to evade patrols at Hogwarts after hours.

The Healer who emerged into the corridor began to walk briskly in Hermione's direction.  His face changed as he closed on Hermione, which made her heart sink.  Had she been spotted?  But the Healer's attention was on something further up the corridor.

"Forget something, Constance?" the Healer asked jovially.

"Er..." said Mediwitch Constance, whose surname Hermione had yet to remember.  "Yes.  Sorry.  Shouldn't be long."

Hermione looked back to see the young Mediwitch who had hailed her in reception hurrying along the passageway.  She was still wearing her work robes.

"Staff room, is it?" the Healer asked.  "You're lucky you caught me.  I've just had to lock up."

Hermione frowned.  Lock up the staff room?  She'd been in and out of that room herself, at all hours of the day, back when she'd done her brief stint here, helping with post-battle injuries.

"Something about an alert," the Healer went on, when Constance didn't reply.  "It's come down from Kingsley Shacklebolt.  Last ten minutes or so.  There was an attempt to extract Malfoy from custody as he was returned to Azkaban.  Unsuccessful, but the perpetrator evaded capture.  And with Snape still here, of course, we're being told to err on the side of caution."

"I see," said Constance.

"So we're not allowed to leave rooms accessible.  Just in case someone wants to hide.  There's extra Aurors on their way, too."  The Healer began to walk back the way he had come, now with the Mediwitch at his side.  "Storm in a teacup, I suspect.  But Shacklebolt likes to feel important, so we've all got to pretend that disaster is imminent."

Hermione waited until the two medical staff had disappeared again into the staff room, then she hurried the rest of the way along the corridor.

She had a bad feeling about this.

~~~

"Merlin's sodding _bum-crack_ , Miss Granger, you scared the _daylights_ out of me!"

Auror Templeton clutched at his chest and stared wide-eyed at Hermione's floating disembodied head.

"Sorry, Marcus," she said.  "No time for subtleties.  I need to see Snape, and the medics on this floor hate me almost as much as they hate him."

"Ah.  Yes.  There's that," he nodded.

"So can I go in?"

"It's hardly up to me, is it?"

Hermione arched a brow.  "You're guarding his door, Marcus.  You're supposed to keep him safe."

"Oh.  Yes.  I suppose that's right."  Marcus shuffled and looked away.

Which answered Hermione's earlier wonderings about the Auror stationed outside Snape's room: were they there to keep him inside or others out?  Mainly the first one, it would seem.

"I need to see him," Hermione said.

"Right ho, then.  But be quick, eh?  There's some kind of hullabaloo going on."

"I heard.  Look – you really do need to be careful.  I could have been anyone!"

Marcus frowned at her.  "You look remarkably like Hermione Granger, for an 'anyone'."

"Polyjuice, you numpty!"

"Oh.  Right.  Um – have you taken Polyjuice?"

"Ah, yes," she said dryly, "the age-old guaranteed counter to someone sneaking about under a Polyjuice disguise – just ask them."

Templeton looked at her blankly, but Hermione was sure she heard the faintest of snorts from inside Snape's room.

She sighed.  "No, Marcus, I haven't taken Polyjuice.  But be careful.  Don't trust your own eyes."

"Um – should I trust them now?" Marcus asked.

"Yes.  Trust them now, then when I'm gone, stop trusting."

"Right you are."

It occurred to Hermione that, at twenty-two years of age, Marcus Templeton was a ridiculously young and not overly impressive Auror.  Still, given that a Healer might come round the corner at any moment and demand she remove herself from the premises, she offered Marcus a reassuring smile, knocked lightly on the door and then slipped inside.

The door closed.

Snape was in his usual chair, with a tea tray on his table.  The dressing over his wound was neat and clean; clearly it had been reapplied in the last twelve hours.  He was holding a teacup in his steady right hand, and he arched a brow at her.

"Tell me you haven't forgotten the best way to detect Polyjuice," he demanded, as if their last, rather unfortunate conversation had never even taken place.

"In the absence of a Thief's Downfall like at Gringotts?  I'd use my sense of smell.  Powdered horn of Bicorn smells like burnt hair, even when it's been integrated into a potion."

"Adequate," he decided.  "Show me your left hand."

She slipped it out of the cloak, realising in that moment that Snape had not so much as blinked when she'd arrived in his room only as a floating head.  She gave him a wave.  "Hi."

Snape just sighed.  "Perhaps next time you'll remember that Apparition requires composure."

"I don't tend to make the same mistake twice," she said carefully.

A loaded statement, and one that suddenly did not seem to be all that much about Apparition.

Snape nodded slowly.  "See that you do not."

They looked at each other.

Then a few stray clues pieced themselves together and Hermione said, "Oh my god."

"Granger?"

" _Shit_."

"Make me repeat myself and I will demonstrate how my wandless casting is improving at the same rate as my teacup handling."

"Sorry.  Just...shit."

"You said that."

"Polyjuice!"

Snape's irritation faded and was replaced by a searing kind of focus.  "When.  Who.  Details."

"Mediwitch Constance...Thingie."

"Constance Underwood."

"Right!  I saw her in reception.  She'd finished her shift and she was heading for the changing rooms.  Twenty, twenty-five minutes ago?  Then, a few minutes ago she was outside.  Still in her work robes.  One of the Healers assumed she'd left something in the staff room up here.  Non-essential rooms are being locked down – Shacklebolt's issued an alert.  Someone tried to nab Malfoy and they're still at large."

"Burnt hair?" he demanded.

"Wasn't close enough to sniff.  Shit.  I need to catch up with them, work it out."

She spun towards the door, just as the lighting globe in the room dimmed from its utilitarian white to a reddish part of the spectrum.  A thrum sounded and a magically-recorded voice advised all patients and staff to stay in their wards and rooms.  Message delivered, the light returned to its original hue.

"It's her," Hermione said.

"It's definitely someone," Snape agreed.  "Get that cloak over your head.  Get out of here.  Now."

"Don't be daft," Hermione said.  "They're probably here for you!"

" _Now_!"

"You don't have a wand.  I'm not leaving you unprotected."

Snape rolled his eyes in exasperation.  "There is an Auror outside this room.  There is another one in reception.  I do not need an eighteen year old girl for protection."

"Wow.  That's ageist, sexist _and_ stupid.  Especially considering the Auror outside is Marcus Templeton–"

From beyond the door there came a shout, a whooshing sound, a pained cry and then a horrible judder as something exploded.

"Fucking fucking fucking _hell_ ," Snape growled.  For a moment, Hermione paused; she hadn't heard Snape use such language before.  Then: "Cover up.  In the corner.  Breathe very quietly.  Do _not_ do anything to help."

"But–"

"Do _nothing_!  Seriously, Hermione, if any future esteem I may find for you is worthy of keeping–"

Hermione was already wrapping the cloak around herself.  "I'd take you being alive in this world over some of your esteem, every single time.  Idiot."

She'd barely sequestered herself in the corner situated to the right of the door when the thing flew open and a figure strode inside.  Mediwitch Constance Underwood was looking quite a bit more aggressive than Hermione remembered.  Her eyes burned with hatred, her wand still smouldered with the residue of what looked and smelled like a Blasting Curse, and Hermione feared horribly for the health and well-being of Marcus Templeton.

"Snape," Constance said, her usually cheerful and perky voice gravelled with loathing.

Hermione looked at Snape.  Snape looked at the Polyjuiced interloper.  His eyes seemed to take in stance, physicality, and then lingered on that brandished wand.

"Augustus Rookwood," he said.  "I thought Aberforth got you."

"That cretin?  His stunners couldn't keep a pigeon down.  I went for the tactical withdrawal."  The door was kicked shut and Constance-who-was-not-Constance moved further into the room.  "What gave me away?"

"Aspen.  Thirteen inches.  Dragon heartstring."

"That is not a unique wand."

"You hold it like a dueller.  And you always choose a Blasting Curse, when in doubt."

Constance, who had become Augustus Rookwood even in Hermione's mind, shrugged.  "Fair comment."  He used his stolen features to sniff, then sneer at Snape.  "And here we are, then."

"Indeed."  Snape settled more comfortably in his chair and gave Rookwood a bored look.  "Was there something you wanted, or is this just a social call?"

Hermione pressed her lips together to control a burst of glee.

Rookwood turned back to the door and cast an almost-careless spell at the doorway.

"Cursed barrier," Snape observed; Hermione liked to think it was for her benefit.  "No one without a Dark Mark will be able to pass through."

"And there's few enough of us left."

"Is this a break-out, then?" Snape asked.  Because of course, he never revealed himself until he had all the information he needed.

Unfortunately, Rookwood didn't buy this.  He let out a snarl of a laugh and shook his head.  "You're a traitor, Snape.  The worst kind."

"There are good kinds?"

"Shut up.  You've been a traitor for a long time.  Bellatrix always told me to watch you.  She never believed you were one of us."

"I suppose even a broken watch is correct twice a day."

Rookwood was getting angry at Snape's cool retorts.  "You have no right to speak of her!"

"You're wrong.  This is not Voldemort's world, Woody.  I think you'll find a seventeen year old boy put paid to that.  This is a world where people can speak freely.  Even about deranged psychos like Bellatrix."

Rookwood's wand arm swished with almost inhuman speed and precision, and a moment later there came a fiery expulsion from the wand's tip.  Hermione barely had time to catch a breath in alarm before the curse flew past Snape's ear and exploded into the hospital bed at the back of the room.  The ironwork screeched and the linens tore into a straggly cloud of shredded fibres.  The bed complained, groaning and shuddering, then the centre of it collapsed to the floor.

Snape waited for the noise to abate before he said, quite calmly, "Missed."

Rookwood glared.  "Do you think I'd have missed if I'd been aiming at your head?"

"Probably not," Snape said.  He sat back, stretched his legs out under his dressing gown, looked like the very epitome of relaxed-and-comfortable.  "You're a vicious, self-entitled, sadistic little prick, Woody, but martial spells always were your _forte_.  I don't think even I could cast faster than you."

Hermione heard an edge to that statement.  It was enough to inform her that Snape was directing this exchange for her benefit.

"I'm fast," Rookwood agreed.  "Twice as fast as most.  Very handy, in duelling."

"Mmm.  You hear one word of your opponent's spell and you've already cast in response."

Ah.  Now that _was_ important information: so if she cast at Rookwood it needed to be voiceless.  She wondered if she could risk popping her hand out of the cloak and giving Snape a thumbs-up to let him know she understood.  Probably not.  Rookwood currently had his back to her, but accomplished duellers tended to have a very well developed sense of hearing.  Which was, come to think of it, a further problem.  Because even if she cast a voiceless hex, it would be impossible to do so silently; the cloak would rustle, the wand would whistle through the air...was Rockwood good enough to hear that kind of sound and retaliate?

"So what's all this, then, Snape?" Rookwood asked.  "Trying to flatter me into letting you go?"

"Letting me go where?  I'm right where I need to be, at the moment."

"Of course.  You're still recovering."  He gestured at Snape's bandaged throat.  "Surprised you survived Nagini's bite."

"Believe me, no one was more surprised than I."

"Drains your magic, I'm told, even if it doesn't kill you."

"It does.  Would you like me to demonstrate?"  Snape lifted his hand.  Rookwood stepped back and raised his wand.  Snape let out a low chuckle.  "Honestly, Woody, what do you think I'm going to do?  Lumos you to death?"

"You're a traitor and a liar, Snape.  Why would I trust anything you say?"

"Ah.  Why indeed?"

A noise intruded into this stand-off: something clattered hard against the door.  This was followed by the sound of a surprised yelp.

Rookwood shot Snape a look, then went to open the door.  He peered out into the corridor.  There came various shouts demanding Mediwitch Constance Underwood's surrender, and a cluster of coloured martial spells that exploded harmlessly against the barrier Rookwood had erected.  He used Constance's face to smirk through the doorway, then closed the door again.

During this distraction, Hermione had managed to un-sleeve her wand.  Very slowly and gently, she used her left hand to make space within the confines of the cloak.  She had never tried to cast a spell through the cloak's material, and had no intention of doing so now.  She just wanted to make the process of freeing her wand and casting a voiceless hex as swift as possible.

"I don't think we'll be disturbed," Rookwood told Snape.  "They don't even know who's in here."

"So you came here thinking you could Apparate clean away afterwards?"

"That's the idea," said Rookwood.

"Sorry to disappoint you, old man, but there are anti-Apparition wards in this room."  Snape breathed deeply and steepled his fingers in front of his chin.  "They've not been keen on my leaving."

"They don't trust you," Rookwood deduced.

Snape tut-tutted.  "The things I've had to do, over the last twenty years?  I'd be astonished if anyone bothers to trust me, ever again."

"No more than you deserve."

"Of course," Snape said agreeably.

Rookwood actually stamped his foot.  "Do you have to be so calm about everything?"

"Well, my Healers say it's for the best.  Keeps the blood pressure nice and steady."

"Maybe this will give you pause for thought, then."

And Augustus Rookwood, in the disguised form of a young Mediwitch, reached into a pocket of his robes and he pulled out a knife.

A lethal looking knife.

A very _familiar_ lethal looking knife.

Bellatrix Lestrange's cursed knife.

Hermione went numb all over.  _Oh god no not again..._   She bit her lip so hard she drew blood, because it was the only thing that might stop her from letting out a whimper.  _Not again no more please please please..._ She felt her body shudder in remembrance.  She felt stray jolts of agony as memories clamoured for attention: that silver blade slicing into her flesh.  _Please I can't I can't..._   She bit harder and tried to keep it together–

And her attempt at composure was all for nought, because her numbed hand had already failed to keep a hold of her wand.  She knew she'd dropped it before it even hit the ground.  She fumbled to stoop and catch it.  She dreaded the sound it would make on the tiled floor.  She knew that the moment he heard the noise, Rookwood would spin and cast and she'd be a smear over the walls of Snape's hospital room.

As if from a record player on too-slow speed, she heard Snape's voice begin a sentence.  "Isn't that–"

Her wand stopped falling.

She cringed, held her breath, waited for a clatter that did not come...because the very tip of the wand had lodged itself between the laces of her right trainer.  It was propped up, trapped between the invisibility cloak and her own leg.  She held still, statue-still, refused to breathe, tried not to let her racing heart create the kind of vibrations in her body that might disturb this precarious resting place.

"–Bellatrix's knife?" Snape finished, his voice gaining pitch and speed as Hermione's world sped up once more.

"Took it off a Delacour at Hogwarts," Rookwood said.  "No idea how she came by it."

Shell Cottage.  Dobby.  Hermione felt a sharp stab of grief.  Her eyes remained locked on that short length of vicious dulled silver, held with casual violence by a man who had no qualms about using it.  The cut at her collarbone itched and stung, like someone had poured lemon juice over it.

She tried, very slowly, to reach down and grasp the end of her wand without making any kind of a rustling noise.

"So anyway," Rookwood said, "let's see if this is likely to perk you up."

Rookwood cast a body-bind.  Snape's body stiffened in its chair.  Rookwood then added a wand pattern that Hermione did not recognise.  Snape's face relaxed.  He blinked several times, but there was a new alarm in his eyes that he couldn't quite hide.  His breathing had become more rapid.

"There we go," said Rookwood.  "All perfectly aware, just a touch on the paralysed side.  Utterly and completely helpless."  He stepped closer, confident now, and re-sleeved his wand.  He switched Bellatrix's knife to his right hand.  "Your vocal chords are functional, though, so please don't hold back."  Rookwood leaned in and lowered his voice, almost seductively.  "Truly, Severus – don't hold back.  Not on my account."  The smile he offered Snape using that stolen face was pure cruelty.  "You should be able to feel everything," he murmured.  He reached with his free hand and caressed Snape's cheek.  "Pleasure?"  His fingers caught on Snape's lower lip, pulled, twisted, dug.  "Discomfort?"

Snape's eyes did not leave Rookwood's.  He looked, and breathed through his nose, and made no noise of pain or protest.

Rookwood became impatient.  He let go of Snape's lip and, with a rage and violence that was shocking, back-handed Snape across the mouth.  Snape's head snapped back as far as the body-bind allowed.  Still he made no sound, even though his lip was now bleeding and his jaw had to ache like a bastard.

"Oh, why do I bother?" Rookwood mused with a sigh.  "Fine.  Let's do this properly.  No more messing about.  What shall we disfigure first?  An ear?  An eye?  Ah – yes, you don't like that notion, do you?  Shall we make ourselves a brand new Mad-Eye Moody?"  The tip of the cursed knife came up to Snape's eyebrow and began to cut a gouge around his left eye.

There was no more time to waste, and to blazes with Snape's instruction not to intervene.  Hermione knew that it was up to her to end this before Snape suffered permanent damage, so she stopped trying to do everything quietly and groped for her wand.  Rather inevitably, she pushed it to one side and it tipped away from its resting place against her leg.  She caught her breath, stretched and twisted...

And then she straightened up with her wand in her right hand, ready to go...

Only to find that Augustus Rookwood was looking right at her with Constance Underwood's eyes.

Correction.

He was looking right _through_ her.

"What the fuck was that?" Rookwood demanded.  He still held the knife.  Blood dripped from it.  Once, _her_ blood had dripped from it.  That blade loved blood so much.

"That?" Snape said in a strained voice.  "My invisible army of bodyguards.  You're screwed now, Woody."

Snape's face was a bloody mess.  Trickles formed rivulets over his features.  Hermione told herself to get on with it and cast the fucking hex.  The full body-bind: she knew it backwards.  She could cast it voiceless.  And Rookwood didn't have his wand at the ready, which would buy her at least two seconds, even when she poked her arm out of the cloak and gave her position away...

But all she could see was that silver blade.  All she could hear was Bellatrix's voice, demanding information, screaming about swords, threatening her with death and with worse.  All she could feel was the white-hot wrongness of that blade as it sliced and seared and violated her flesh.

Sensory overload.  It had her trapped within the worst minutes she'd ever experienced.

And cast back to that time, she was filled again with a very specific terror: that it would not take much more before she would _have_ to give in.  She wanted to be brave, to defy, to keep her secrets and protect her friends, but there came a point when even Hermione Granger had to acknowledge that she had limits.  The notion that she might let people down was beyond unbearable.

And _god_ , the pain.  And the sickening, crippling helplessness.  She'd never felt more weak and more fallible and more vulnerable, and it made her despise herself.  She had the strong desire to die, to die right fucking _now_ , because if she died before Bellatrix went past those Hermione-Granger-limits then maybe she could avoid becoming the thing that cost Harry that last, awful battle–

No.

_No_.

That was past.  It was gone.  Lucius Malfoy was in Azkaban and Bellatrix Lestrange was dead.

With a monumental wrench, Hermione pulled herself back from the suffocating, all-consuming memories.  She blinked, trying to clear her head.  She needed clarity.  She needed strength.  She needed to stop being this self-absorbed thing that constantly wallowed in regrets and mistakes.

When her vision cleared, she saw Augustus Rookwood pointing his wand straight at her corner.  Mere seconds had passed, but whatever advantage she might have had, she had lost.  He was armed and he was ready.

"One way to find out," he said, and tossed a Sectumsempra in her direction.

She moved before she thought about moving.  Dropped to the ground, tucked her knees up to her chest, rolled clear.  The slash of the curse went diagonally downwards and scorched and scarred the wall behind, but it missed her.

"Ah," Rookwood said.  "Now that was _definitely_ something."

He adjusted his aim downwards, which would have been an awkward moment for Hermione if not for one very specific thing: Augustus Rookwood had apparently purchased his Polyjuice from a backstreet Potioneer whose brewing skills were lacking.  His disguise, rather fortuitously, chose this moment to release its hold on his body.

"Grrah," said Rookwood, and bent double.  Hermione almost sympathised; she could remember how much the transformations under Polyjuice hurt.  He straightened up, tried to focus, tried to point his wand even though it wavered drunkenly.  Beneath the dark, neatly combed hair of Constance, her slender, elfin features bulged and roughened.  Poc marks began to crater the skin, appearing like footsteps being stomped by some invisible parasite.

But his wand arm did not drop, and he aimed at the floor near the corner, making Hermione scuffle clear.  She managed, narrowly, to miss the next unsteady curse as it spat forth.  Her scramble across the floor knocked her into the side of the table.  Her eyes were focused on Rookwood so she wasn't expecting the obstacle, and made a noise of irritated surprise when she met the table-leg with the top of her head.

Rookwood's wand followed the sound unerringly.  She tried to skirt the table, but the next Sectumsempra caught her leg in a slash of pain.  Hermione swallowed a cry of shock and looked down, even as she moved.  The lower part of her left leg had trailed clear of the cloak and was now leaving a smear of blood against the white tiled floor.

"Odd," Rookwood said in a strained, pained voice that was a mixture of Constance Underwood and an older, growlier, masculine sound.  "Muggle trainers.  Ladies' tights.  And a cloak of invisibility.  Who _could_ this be?"  He kept his wand on that treacherous foot and was about to cast, but another transformation spasm hit him.  He let out a half-scream and clenched his arms around himself as he staggered with it.

"You really need a word with your potion-seller," Snape said.  Then, "Granger, cover up and stay calm."

His voice steadied her.  There he was, in an almost full body-bind, helpless, as a psychotic sadist armed with a wand and a cursed knife threatened him.  And here she was, fully functional, armed and intelligent and with the advantage of invisibility, and all she was doing was scuttling about on the floor leaving a trail of blood from a gash in her leg.

_And_ her tights were laddered.  That bastard.

Hermione pulled her foot into the confines of the cloak and wrapped the cloth around herself.  She breathed, looked around, saw the debris from the blasted bed behind the table.  She couldn't move across there without making it obvious.  So she risked circling back, avoiding the smears of her own blood, and crawled, caterpillar-like, to the corner on the far side of the door.

She wished she knew the counter-spell to the Cursed Barrier.

She wished she hadn't freaked out so much at the sight of that terrible knife.

She wanted to make Severus Snape proud of her, but she didn't _like_ feeling that way because it was too reminiscent of the student-teacher dynamic.  And that, frankly, was starting to become a bit weird between them.

Rookwood straightened up.  He was a foot taller, a shitload uglier, and angry as hell.  He breathed hard and perspired.  The transformation had sapped his energies.

"Where is she?  The mudblood?" he demanded.

"Ah, yes.  A question I'm guaranteed to answer."  Snape sneered at Rookwood.  "Honestly, man, if you have to be a maniac then be a maniac, but don't be a moron as well."

Hermione checked the cloak around her, took firm hold of her wand, planned the route her hand would take through the twisted folds of fabric so that she could cast.

Rookwood jammed his wand under Snape's chin.  "Show yourself, mudblood, or this treacherous, sneering half-blood dies," he growled.

"Oh, sticks and stones, Woody," Snape retorted, even as his life hung in the balance.

There was a tiny flash of light.  Rookwood, already on edge, startled and stepped back.

Looked like Snape was trying to Lumos him to death after all.  But it was the only further distraction Hermione needed.  She pushed her wand-arm clear of the cloak, swished competently in the pattern of a full body-bind, cast without voice, and watched dispassionately as Augustus Rookwood collapsed to the floor.

Everything was quiet for a moment.

Then the world rushed back in, noisy and clamouring.  White noise.  So much it hurt her ears.

Hermione staggered to her feet.  Her left leg could take little weight and she needed to limp heavily.  The cloak she tossed aside along with the bead-bag that she'd been carrying the whole time.  She stumbled across the room, leaned on the back of the visitor's chair and peered at Rookwood's prone form.

She waited for him to stir once more, like the monster at the end of the movie.  The Death Eater lay on his back, eyes unseeing and yet somehow still furious as they gazed at the ceiling.

"He's taken care of," Snape said, almost gently.

The noise quietened until it was no more than a faint ringing in her ears.

"Fuck's sake," Hermione gasped.

"We're all right."

"Merlin."  Then, almost petulantly, "I used to be _good_ at this!"

"Calm yourself."

"I screwed that up big-time, didn't I?"

"We are alive.  That is the only outcome worth considering."  Snape was still blinking away the blood which oozed from the cursed lacerations around his eye.  He seemed indifferent to the pain he had to be feeling.  "When you have recovered your wits, would you kindly release me from this bind?  And be very careful where you direct the counter-curse."

Hermione glanced back at Rookwood.  "Good point."  She limped over to Snape's chair, grasped it from behind and pulled it back a way with an awkward series of hops.  "Do excuse me," she muttered.

"This once," Snape acceded.

"There."  She came around to the front, placing her back to the bad guy, and she cast.  Snape's body relaxed from its rigid paralysis, and he hauled himself out of the chair to a standing position.  He was shaky in his movements.

"Thank you," he said, only a little ungraciously.

"Welcome."  Hermione swayed on her one good leg and reached naturally to lean on his shoulder.  He eyed her hand but did not flick it away, which she took as a good sign.  "So.  Do you trust me?"

He arched his unbloodied eyebrow at her.  "Specify the context."

"You've been cut with a cursed knife.  I know how to fix that."

A pause, then Snape nodded.  "You may attempt to do so."

Hermione wasn't sure there was a more valuable, terrifying, onerous gift in the world than an acknowledgement of trust from Severus Snape.  But she accepted it anyway, and she cast the counter-curse that she had practised over and over on pillows and upholstery and, at one point three nights ago, on her own left thumb.  Snape's cut closed seamlessly, leaving a frightening amount of sticky red blood in smears and trickles on his face.

She nodded satisfaction.  "May I clean you up?"

"Produce a handkerchief and spit on it, and we will be having words," Snape warned.

One corner of her mouth twitched in a smile, but she lifted her wand, marvelled as Snape did not even flinch, and whispered, "Tergeo."  The blood was siphoned away, and Snape was left with a tiny split in his lip and a blooming purple bruise on his jaw that would likely be impressive unless a Healer intervened.

"Sorry," she said.  "But I should probably leave the rest to the professionals."

"Your lip is bleeding," he said.

"We match, then."  She grimaced.  "Did it to myself.  Trying not to cry out."  She frowned.  "Don't know how the hell you managed to stay quiet.  I seem to remember screaming my head off when that knife was cutting into me."

He didn't explain.  Perhaps he didn't have to; Severus Snape had probably learned to stay quiet and still when confronted with violence years before he was old enough to go to Hogwarts.

"Sit down before you fall down," he simply said.  "Let me see your leg."

Hermione pushed the long-forgotten tea tray aside and sat down on the low table.  She propped her injured leg on Snape's vacated chair, examining the gash herself.  It ran down the meat of her calf then twisted over her shin to finish beside the bony bulge of her ankle joint.  She must have been rolling, as she'd scrambled across the floor, for the slash of the curse to have cut her in this way.

"Bloody _ow_ ," she said solemnly as she saw the extent of the wound.  She had not been cut down to the bone, but it was deep enough and very long.  Thanks to the adrenaline rush of the last ten minutes, she was only just beginning to process the throbbing pain in her leg.

Snape, it seemed, was more interested in her less-than-practical narrow skirt.  "Granger – what the hell are you wearing?"

"Hmm?  Oh.  These were my interview clothes.  Except the trainers.  Only the interview didn't go well.  On account of Mrs. Minns wanting the Purebloods who are moving to Australia to give her lots of money for the school.  Me being there would have been awkward."

There was a pause, then Snape said, "I see."  Then, "My magic is insufficient to heal this injury at present."

Hermione tut-tutted.  "I _knew_ I never got enough alone-time with that journal of yours.  Can you teach me the counter-curse to Sectumsempra?"

"Yes.  But it would take time, and I suspect that the people gathered outside that door would very much like to know what has happened in here.  The Healers can take care of it."

"You're just saying that because you hate looking at my legs, aren't you?"

The look she was given was pure Snape.  "Your capacity for subtlety is non-existent, Miss Granger."

"Give us a chance.  I've had a hell of a day.  Two days actually.  Back and forth."

"Then refrain from flirting with me until you have regained some equilibrium..."

"If I have to."

"... _and_ your NEWT level Potions, of no less a grade than Outstanding."

"I can't flirt till I've passed my exams?"

"Those are my conditions.  Non-negotiable."

She nodded.  "Fine.  I'm probably very bad at flirting anyway."

From the corner of her eye she saw Bellatrix Lestrange's knife lying on the tiled floor, still covered in Snape's blood.  She cringed.  She was beginning to tremble.

"Bugger," she said.

"What?"

"Think I'm going into shock."

She leaned forward and hugged herself.  The trembling became shakes and her body flushed freezing cold.  She dropped her head and tried to hold herself steady.

A hand came down on her shoulder.  Moments later Snape was sitting on the table alongside her, and his arm wrapped round her and pulled her next to him.  "Do not even _think_ that this will become habit," he said.

"I know," she said, through chattering teeth.  "Special circumstances.  Just a tick – it'll pass."

"Breathe.  Try to relax."

She tried.  It took a few minutes before she seemed to make much headway.

"So anyway," she murmured, "for the record?  I'm beginning to suspect that this whole liking you thing isn't just PTSD related."

Snape sighed.  "Hermione–"

"I'm not flirting.  This is good, solid information I'm giving you.  In case you were wondering.  I'm not expecting anything in return."

"Very well," he said.

"I mean, I know you've spent the last seven years hating my living guts, so..."

Snape snorted a laugh.  "We are truly going to have to work on your ability to be subtle."

A long pause.

"That letter you sent," she said, when she could stand the silence no more.  She pulled away to see his face, and only regretted the way he withdrew his arm from her shoulders a little bit.  "You probably saved my relationship with my parents."

"You have resolved your difficulties?"

"Getting there.  You were right.  It needed honesty."  She sighed.  "I'd just persuaded myself that what I did to keep them safe was so terrible, I'd forfeited any right to any opinion.  I couldn't ask them to come home because I had to let them choose.  For themselves.  If you see what I mean."

"Typical Gryffindor self-sacrificing.  Unnecessary and ultimately narcissistic."

"Oh, of course.  Bit like you, trying to chuck me out of this room before the revenge freak showed up."  She elbowed him.  "Thing is, me and my mum and dad – we'd got into this whole vicious circle of misunderstanding.  Every time I tried to tell them it was their choice, what comes next, and they shouldn't worry about me, what they _heard_ was me saying they were a burden and my life would be easier without them.  And because they thought they were a burden, they couldn't offer to come home like they wanted to.  Which made me think they _didn't_ want to.  Because they couldn't forgive me for what I'd done."  Hermione sighed.  "And we kept going round and round, all of us getting more and more convinced of completely the wrong thing."

"Gryffindors are idiots," Snape observed.

"My parents are considered Gryffindors?"

"One can only suppose."

She managed a smile at that.  "Seriously though.  I came close to screwing things up and your note helped."

Snape looked pleased for the briefest of instants before he defaulted to a glower.  "Sometimes the most obvious path is the hardest one to see," he said.

And wasn't that the truth?

Hermione was no longer thinking about her relationship with her parents when she glanced at Snape beside her.  Funny, how something could be obvious and indiscernible at the same time.  It was fortunate indeed that she was no stranger to ambivalence.

She held up her hand.  The shaking was reduced sufficiently to allow for casting.

"Right then," she said.  "Let's get this barrier down."

~~~

"Hermione!"

It was Harry's voice.  (Again.  Of course it was.  When her name was called like this, in panic or excitement or just plain need, it was only ever going to be Harry or Ron.  And she'd been here before, in a hospital ward, with Harry shouting for her and leading with his shoulder as he moved around people to make his way to her bedside.)

"I'm fine," she said loudly before he even reached her.  "All mended."

"You're okay?"  His eyes were wild with panic.  "I was on my way after Shacklebolt let me know about the Malfoy thing, only there was another skirmish on the ground floor and–"

"Harry, I'm fine.  Are you okay?"

"Course I am," he said, as if the idea that he might also have been hurt in the evening's incident had never occurred to him.  "There were two other Death Eaters trying to cause a distraction – keep the attention away from the first floor.  We sorted them out."

"Constance?"

"Who?"

"The Mediwitch that Rookwood used in his Polyjuice disguise."

"Oh, she was found in a shower cubicle.  Body-bound.  She'll be fine."

"Anyone hurt?"

Harry's face fell.  "Marcus didn't make it."

She closed her eyes, thinking about the rather uncharitable thoughts she'd entertained regarding that young man in the minutes before his violent death.

"Where's Snape?" he asked.

"He's been assigned another room.  They need to do a bit of a clean-up on his usual one."  Hermione brightened.  "This one has a window.  Let's try to keep him in there till he's better."

Harry nodded.  "So you saved him."

"Actually I was utterly incompetent.  I dropped my wand, freaked at the sight of a knife, and managed to shove my leg out of the cloak to get slashed at."

"You saved him," he said again.

"Well, sort of.  With a lot of luck and a bit of help from Snape."

Harry smirked.  "So, er, how _grateful_ is he?"  His eyebrows joggled, Groucho Marx style, and his eyes glinted.

Hermione tut-tutted and said, "He might be grateful enough to get me through my Potions NEWT.  Which is impressive, I think, considering how much he hates teaching."

"So you're going back to Hogwarts after all?"

"Not a chance!" Hermione said.  "But he's been talking to McGonagall about arranging some classes at the Ministry.  Most of the staff at Hogwarts are willing to offer tutorials in their free time for students who aren't comfortable going back."

"So Snape's still going to be your teacher?"

"I expect so.  For a few months, anyway."

Harry winced.  "Bit weird," he noted.

"Yup."

He sat down on the side of the bed and peered at her legs.  "I didn't know you even owned a pair of tights."

"I had an interview, remember?"

"Oh, right.  So it's better, is it?  The injury?"

"All done."

"Can I take you home?  We could get chips."

"Chips."  Hermione considered.  "What a brilliant idea."

Harry looked smug.  "One of us has to be the brains of this operation."

"Hermione!  Harry!"

The voice was Ron's.  Obviously.  Ron did what Harry had done a couple of minutes earlier and barrelled through the people on the ward to reach the bedside.  He was less good at weaving around them than Harry was, and had to scatter a few apologies along the way.

"You're both okay?" Ron demanded.

"Fine," they chorused.

Ron spread his arms wide and enveloped both of them in as much of a hug as their relative positions could accommodate.

"That's it," Ron said.  "I am not letting either of you out of my sight, ever again."  He looked at Harry.  "Can I come and live at Grimmauld Place?"

"If you like," Harry said amiably.  "But when Ginny decides she wants to do the same, you're running interference for me with your mum."

Hermione said, "We were thinking of chips."

"You're a genius."

"Harry's idea."

"He's a genius."

"But I'm going straight home," Hermione added, "because I am currently wearing one half of a set of tights, a skirt with a ripped seam, and I am in acute need of a shower and a decent cup of tea."

Ron and Harry nodded at each other.

"I'll take her home," Ron decided.

"I'll get the chips," Harry said.

"I'll be over here," Hermione said.  "Just the little woman with no free will."

"Excellent!" Ron said cheerfully. " Come on, then, little woman."

"Remember the slug-vomiting hex?"

"Sorry.  Would you do me the honour of letting me side-along you home, Miss Granger?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.  "That kind of chivalry is just chauvinism in disguise."

"There's no bloody pleasing some women, is there?" Ron complained to Harry.

Harry smirked.  "Hermione, tell Ron to side-along you home and then we can get on with our evening."

"Good idea."  She feigned a glare at Ron.  "Make it happen, underling."

Ron wrapped his arms around her and, just prior to Apparating them out of the hospital, murmured, "Please don't frighten me like that again."

Then, with a pop and a moment of disorientation, the two of them were entirely intact and in Islington.

"Will Harry remember the mushy peas?" Ron asked, as they let themselves in to the house.

"Of course.  Though how you can eat that stuff is beyond me."

"I'll put the kettle on," he offered, heading for the staircase down to the lower ground level.  "You go on and change."  A moment later he turned back and said, "So – your Patronus is a rook?"

"Don't even start," Hermione muttered darkly, and took the stairs up to her room two at a time.

~~~


	10. Epilogue - Little 'Three' Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All men who first touch with words go much further afterwards with their hands."
> 
> Antonio Skarmeta  
>  ''Burning Patience' 1985

Hermione stared at the letter grid.  Somehow it was all vowels in the top left corner.  And what was she to do with that 'Y'?

Ah yes.  She could do that.

"Buoyant," she said smugly.

They didn't play Boggle the classic way, writing down words and then crossing off the ones they'd both deduced.  They just called out the words as they occurred, always trying to up the last score.  Now Hermione had thought of a seven, Snape was going to struggle to beat her with this particular grid, even in the remaining minute and a half.

She eased off on her own efforts.  She'd won this round, like she'd won the last three.

"Attorneys," Snape said, with six seconds on the timer still to go.

He sat back, as her eyes raced over the grid.  Damn it, he was right.  She'd missed the diagonal in the corner–

The timer ran out.

Hermione thumped the arm of her chair.  "Bollocks!"

"No 'k'," Snape said.

"Ha ha."

She wrote up his nine-letter score on the sheet where she was keeping track.  "For future information," she said, "my mood is always worsened if I do not win at Boggle."

"Hmm.  For future reference," Snape countered, "I never, ever pander."

She glanced at him.  He cocked an eyebrow: the left one, completely unscarred in spite of the slicing of a cursed knife nearly two weeks ago.  Hermione widened her eyes at him in challenge, watched his jaw do that twitch which she had come to recognise as the means by which he avoided laughing, then she sat back.  The summer sunshine streamed through the window in Snape's hospital room, and turned the oranges and crimsons of the freesias displayed on the ledge into colours that were almost neon in their intensity.  The aroma of really good Italian coffee still hung in the air.

"So," she said.  "Speaking of being buoyant about attorneys – are you all set for the trial tomorrow?"

Snape leaned forward, gathered the Boggle grid and began to randomise the dice-letters for the next round.  His hair fell forward and hid his eyes.  Hermione smiled indulgently at the familiar mannerism.

"As I understand it," Snape said, "I am required merely to present myself.  And since there will be no shortage of Aurors encouraging me to do just that, safe to say, I am prepared."

He shook the grid, a bit sharply, and in so doing offered Hermione the tiniest glimpse of his nerves.  Perhaps she hadn't helped, in recent weeks.  She'd taken a man who was astonished and resentful to find himself alive, and she'd somehow managed to persuade him that life was not all about regret, sacrifice and self-loathing.  All well and good, except now he might just feel like he had something to lose.

"Technically," she said, feigning cheerfulness, "it works out much better for me if you aren't released.  So be as glower-y and scary-evil as you can possibly be."  When he looked at her askance, she shrugged.  "Well how am I supposed to inflict coffee-and-Boggle mornings on you when you live in a place where you can actually shut the door in my face?"

Snape's eyes narrowed.  "I will, however, be unable to drag you kicking and screaming through your Potions NEWT from Azkaban."

"Ah, Potions Masters are ten-a-penny.  Decent Boggle opponents?  Those are rare."

"Your attempt to bolster my spirits is transparent, deluded and unnecessary."

"There you go, see – three good Boggle words."

"Hermione!"  His voice pierced the congenial cocoon of their meeting.  Then he sighed.  "You should not lose sight of the fact that I have done terrible things in the last twenty years."

"I know.  You seem to think me and Harry have this romantic view of you.  We don't."

"Things," Snape added, ignoring her protest, "for which I deserve sanction."

"Fortunately you're not the one who gets to choose how much punishment you deserve.  And the people who _do_ get to choose will be taking into account the twenty year sentence you've already served."

Snape held her eyes a moment, then he shook his head dismissively.  "Life is not nearly so neat as your rather innocent moralising would have it."

"Probably.  And sometimes it's a lot less murky than your misanthropic, suspicious, unpropitious outlook claims."

He didn't bother with the jaw-twitch this time; he just barked a laugh.  "One thing is certain," he said.  "Your value as a Boggle opponent is unrivalled."

Snape uncovered the letters, started the timer, and that was apparently the end of the discussion.  Such as it was.

Hermione looked at the letters.

"Desire," she said, immediately as she spotted it, and flashed Snape a challenging look.

He arched a classic Snape-brow.  " _Sir_ ," he countered sternly.

"Best you can do?  Three little letters?"

"They'll have to serve," he said.  "For now."

For.

Now.

Hermione realised that there was definitely something to be said for three-letter words.

~~~~~~


End file.
